Dan Simplicio — Originator of Zuni Nugget Style
Zuni Pueblo · 1917 – 1969 · Active 1920s to 1969
The marks
Hougart's reference documents two marks for Dan Simplicio:
- DS — the initials mark (recorded courtesy of Gloria Dollar)
- A five-point star — which Hougart flags for comparison against the star used by John Silver, a visually similar mark that has to be told apart
Collector's caution — read before you attribute. Two honest warnings come with this entry. First, a specific embossed-star variant was wrongly attributed to Dan Simplicio in earlier editions of Hougart's own reference and in Barton Wright's 2000 hallmark book — the correction, credited to Pal & Kim Messier (2014), only appears from Hougart's 5th edition forward. If your star-marked piece was identified from an older reference, re-check it: not every embossed star in the older literature is his. Second, his star sits close enough to John Silver's that Hougart footnotes the comparison directly. Star marks are the hazard zone of this entry; the DS initials are the firmer ground.
The man who said he started the nugget style
Somewhere around 1948, by his own account, a Zuni silversmith set a ring with a large chunk of polished turquoise left exactly the shape it came out of the ground — and soldered an irregular mass of silver on either side, formed to balance the stone. Dan Simplicio claimed that ring was the beginning of Zuni nugget work.
Honesty requires the hedge: that origin story is self-reported. Bedinger, who recorded it in 1973, writes that Simplicio "claims to have originated this style in 1948" — she passes it along as his claim, not as verified fact, and no source in the reference literature independently confirms it. But he claimed it, and the design mechanics Bedinger describes back the plausibility: the trade called these rough, irregular lumps of turquoise wavy-cut, polished without changing their form, and the style's whole logic — varying bezel heights, outlines plain, toothed, or scalloped, prongs shaped or omitted entirely — is composition built around a stone nobody cut to fit. Once natural coral became available, branches and small lumps of it joined the vocabulary, with silver alone or alongside turquoise. Hougart independently records that Simplicio worked in nugget style in the 1940s, which squares with the date. Bedinger's verdict on where it all went: nugget work spread into every article of Zuni adornment, with "no limit to the range of beautiful free-form compositions."
Simplicio learned the craft inside a lineage — Hougart records him as nephew of Juan de Dios, who taught him silversmithing — and he appears in Adair's census of Zuni silversmiths already working by 1940. His career then traces the two defining commercial relationships of mid-century Zuni jewelry: nugget-style work in the 1940s with C. G. Wallace, the long-time trader at Zuni Pueblo, and later with John Kennedy at the Gallup Indian Trading Company, the house Kennedy took over in 1952. Wallace to Kennedy is, in miniature, the arc of the whole trade — the pre-war trader era into the post-war distribution era — and Simplicio worked both chapters. His range ran wider than most of his Zuni contemporaries in Hougart's pages: cluster work, leaf appliqué, channel inlay, casting, stampwork, silver and gold, and — rare for the era's Zuni entries — hollowware.
Then there's the family. Simplicio taught his brothers Chauncey and Kirk, and the Simplicio name accounts for more than six documented working smiths across the following generations — the largest family cluster in Hougart's Zuni section. The nugget style he claimed as his own runs straight through it: brother Mike Sr. worked nugget and leaf appliqué; Chauncey and his wife Isabel carried nugget work and mosaic inlay forward. Whatever a skeptic makes of the 1948 claim, the teaching is documented — and it built a dynasty.
He worked the same pueblo, the same era, and the same trading post as carver Leekya Deyuse — another Zuni master of the C. G. Wallace years.
References
- Hougart, Bille. Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks, 5th ed. (2022), Zuni section (Simplicio entries, incl. footnotes 29, 31–35) and Gallup Indian Trading Company entry.
- Bedinger, Margery. Indian Silver: Navajo and Pueblo Jewelers (1973), pp. 200–201.
- Adair, John. The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths (1944), Appendix II §D (Zuni silversmiths, 1940).
- Ostler (1996), as cited in Hougart for the nugget-style dating and the Chauncey/Kirk teaching lineage.
- Bedinger, Margery. Indian Silver: Navajo and Pueblo Jewelers. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973. Cited by printed page. Statements describe conditions as of 1973.
- Baxter, Paula A., with Allison Bird-Romero. Encyclopedia of Native American Jewelry: A Guide to History, People, and Terms. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 2000. Cited by printed page. Statements describe conditions as of 2000.
- Schaaf, Gregory, with Angie Yan Schaaf. American Indian Jewelry I: 1,200 Artist Biographies, ca. 1800-present. American Indian Art Series, Vol. 5. Santa Fe: CIAC Press, 2003. Cited by printed page. Statements describe conditions as of 2003.
From the Library: Bedinger, Indian Silver (1973)
1973 primary source. Anything described as current here describes 1973, not today.
Bedinger (1973) recorded the claim this way:
“Dan Simplicio, a Zuni, claims to have originated this style in 1948 by setting finger rings each with a large chunk of polished turquoise left in its original shape.”
— Bedinger (1973), p. 201 [1]
From the Library: Baxter, Encyclopedia of Native American Jewelry (2000)
2000 primary source. Anything described as current here describes 2000, not today.
Baxter (2000) credited the Zuni snake ring to him and Leekya Deyuse:
“However, other Southwestern native peoples did not hold the snake in antipathy for adornment; in the early twentieth century, for example, the Zunis developed a popular snake motif that framed finger rings (done by such artists as Leekya Deyuse and Dan Simplicio).”
— Baxter (2000), p. 163 [2]
From the Library: Schaaf, American Indian Jewelry I (2003)
2003 primary source. Anything described as current here describes 2003, not today.
Schaaf (2003), writing of his uncle Juan Dideos, concluded:
“His nephew, Dan Simplicio, learned from him and developed into a master Zuni jeweler”
— Schaaf (2003), p. 140 [3]
According to Schaaf (2003, p. 139), Dan Simplicio's mother was the youngest sister of Juan Dideos, whom Schaaf credited as the first Zuni jeweler to sign his work with a hallmark, and a 1976 letter from the trader C.G. Wallace recorded that Juan taught his nephew to melt silver coins and to make silver leaves of different sizes. [3]
Schaaf (2003, p. 257) recorded that the Zuni lapidary Leo Poblano, who lived from about 1905 to 1959, collaborated sometimes with Lambert Homer, Leekya Deyuse and Dan Simplicio. [3]
Schaaf (2003) recorded his mark as
“(stamped DS with a star)”
— Schaaf (2003), p. 290 [3]
Schaaf (2003, p. 290) recorded Dan Simplicio as Zuni, active from about the 1920s, a nephew and student of Juan Dideos, the teacher of his brothers Kirk and Chauncey, a sometime collaborator of Leekya Deyuse, Lee Edaakie, Teddie Weahkee and Leo Poblano, with his work in the Heard Museum and the Doneghy Collection at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. [3]
Schaaf (2003) wrote:
“He may have been one of the first Zuni jewelers to work in gold.”
— Schaaf (2003), p. 291 [3]
Schaaf (2003) added:
“He sometimes mixed gold and silver in a single piece.”
— Schaaf (2003), p. 291 [3]
This profile is maintained in support of Native American silversmiths and compiled from published references. See something inaccurate, or want to add to it? Contact us.
- Mike Simplicio, Jr. — nephew; mark M. S. SIMPLICIO
Name card shown; hallmark photo to come. © Turquoise Skies Inc.