Norbert Peshlakai — Navajo/Diné Silversmith & His Mark

b. 1953, Fort Defiance, Arizona. The man whose name means "silversmith" — and who found the craft by accident.

Norbert Peshlakai was born into the work twice over. His surname, Beeshłigaii, is the Navajo word for silver — and he is a fourth-generation silversmith, descended from Slender Maker of Silver, one of the earliest documented Navajo smiths and a founding figure of the whole tradition. And yet the craft came to him sideways, by one of the better accidents in Southwestern jewelry.

The Mark

Peshlakai's hallmark is a small figure built from a circle, a dot, and a "V," combined to form the shape of an eye — a mark he chose to stand for vision. (Documented in Medicine Man Gallery's pictorial hallmark index.) One note for collectors: he is a different maker from the earlier silversmith Fred Peshlakai — two distinct hands, two distinct marks.

The Smith

He was born in 1953 at Fort Defiance, and schooled on the Navajo reservation through the eighth grade before finishing high school in Albuquerque — where he took art classes and ran cross-country. At Haskell Junior College in Kansas, he signed up for what he thought was a painting course. It turned out to be a house-painting class. The only other art course open to satisfy the requirement was jewelry-making, so he took it — and found he had a natural hand for metal. His instructor assigned him six pieces to finish the course. That assignment became a career.

He has made silver since the 1970s and is regarded today as a master silversmith and goldsmith, known — like his work — for a real sense of humor.

The Work

Peshlakai's signature is a form he helped invent: the miniature silver "seed pot," a tiny vessel shaped like Pueblo pottery. Beginning around 1976, he was among the first artists to raise them, and became the most prolific hand in the medium. He hollows each pot with a hammer, the way a smith raises silver beads, then textures and stamps the surface with dies he makes himself — filed from concrete masonry nails. A single motif can take six or seven of his stamps; his intricate Mimbres rabbit, drawn from ancient Mimbres pottery imagery, takes as many as ten to render the whiskers and legs.

He wants the metal to look worked, not polished. "I like the idea of something looking like it's beat up all over," he has said, "sort of bumpy and rough… something more unfinished and earthy." He gets there with sandpaper, steel wool, oxidation, and by striking the silver against rock — an earned texture, not a factory shine.

The Standing

Peshlakai is widely called one of the finest silversmiths working, credited as an innovator who opened a new form in the silver seed pot. His work is held at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, and he remains a regular presence at Santa Fe Indian Market and the Heard Museum Guild Fair, where he talks his work through with collectors face to face.