Lee Edaakie — Zuni Silversmith
Lee Edaakie was a Zuni lapidary and silversmith of the 1930s and 1940s, who sold his work through the trader C. G. Wallace. Joseph Stacey's Turquoise Blue Book and Indian Jewelry Digest calls him a "Zuni master craftsman" and shows a run of his pieces from the Wallace collection: carved turquoise in modified double squash blossom forms, 1933; a necklace of Green Blue Gem turquoise, 1936; a superfine turquoise cluster, 1942; and a coral and turquoise cluster necklace (Stacey 1975, pp. 34, 36, 39).
William and Sarah Turnbaugh's Indian Jewelry of the American Southwest names him among the carvers who took up the style of small fetish forms early (Turnbaugh 2007, p. 54). Nancy N. Schiffer's Turquoise Jewelry shows a triangular green Nevada turquoise pendant set in silver and a large turquoise nugget bolo tie of his (Schiffer 2008, pp. 53, 59). Hougart's entry for his brother, Theodore Edaakie, gives Lee's birth year as 1914 and records that he, too, sold through the Wallace operation (Hougart 2022, p. 113).
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References
- Stacey, Joseph, ed. Turquoise Blue Book and Indian Jewelry Digest. Arizona Highways Collectors Series. Phoenix: Arizona Highways, 1975.
- Turnbaugh, William A., and Sarah Peabody Turnbaugh. Indian Jewelry of the American Southwest. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2007 (first published 1988).
- Schiffer, Nancy N. Turquoise Jewelry. Revised 4th edition. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2008.
- Hougart, Bille. Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks: Silversmiths, Designers, Guilds and Traders. 5th edition. Washington, DC: BilleHougartBooks, 2022.
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.