Darryl Dean Begay — Navajo Silversmith & Hallmark
Name-card placeholder — hallmark imagery to follow. © Turquoise Skies Inc.
Active since the 1990s, Darryl Dean Begay (1973–) is a Navajo silversmith working in both traditional and contemporary modes. His practice encompasses sculpture, stylized motifs, figural work, tufa casting, cuttlefish bone casting, carved turquoise, inlay, and work in silver and gold.
He is married to Rebecca Begay and is the father of Nathan and Robert W. Begay. He is a brother of Philander Begay.
Begay received his training from Kenneth Begay and the late Vernon Tracy (?–2015); he also collaborated at times with Ric Charlie and Alvin Yellowhorse. He is a recipient of the 2002 SWAIA Goodman Fellowship and the 2009 SWAIA Best-In-Show award.
At some point he lost his original arrowhead stamp and replaced it with a revised version — an arrowhead containing the letter D and a star inside.
Note: The source entry contains OCR artifacts corrected in this biography.
The Mark
“DD B, part of casting o[utline — text truncated in OCR scan]”
— Hougart, Bille. Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks, 5th ed. (2022), p. ~140.
See also: Kenneth Begay (teacher).
In Motion
Meet Darryl Dean Begay on camera — this is T.Skies’ own footage, filmed firsthand. The feature below is “Meet Darryl Dean Begay Navajo Jeweler and Tufacast Artist”; more clips follow underneath.
More footage: Apache Blue Turquoise Darryl Dean Begay tskies.com · Lone Mountain Turquoise Darryl Dean Begay · Turquoise Grading Darryl Dean Begay Navajo jewelry artist
Know more about this artist? Contact T.Skies.
- Hougart, Bille. Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks, 5th ed. Schiffer Publishing, 2022.