Ronald Tom — Diné Silversmith & His Mark

Ronald Tom's hallmark as photographed on an authenticated piece. © Turquoise Skies Inc.

Navajo. From Red Valley, raised in Mariano Lake, New Mexico; working in Albuquerque. Fifth generation in silver — and he mostly casts it.

Ronald Tom carries a Navajo silversmithing line five generations deep, and where most contemporary smiths fabricate from sheet and wire, Tom mostly casts — sandcasting and tufa-casting, the old method of carving a design into a soft mold and pouring molten silver in. What comes out of his molds is unmistakable: corn maidens whose faces, in the words of one who's handled dozens of them, are "second to none." He's a working, market-proven maker with an unusually deep tie to this house — his pieces have crossed the T.Skies show table across eight separate livestreams, including a full night of his own.

The Work

Tom's range is wide and his hand is heavy on labor. He casts corn maidens, Thunderbirds, hearts, turtles, and his own "healing hands" naja (his own design — not to be confused with the unrelated Coriz-family healing hand), and he'll turn just as readily to Día de los Muertos sugar-skull pendants with hand-appliquéd flowers or a repoussé cuff pounded out to heavy metal — asked once what he was listening to while he made one, he answered, "Real heavy stuff. Slayer. Megadeth." The construction underneath is all hand-work: 18-gauge stampwork cut to shape, embossed "bump-out" domes, twist-wire, adjustable stamped shanks on nearly every ring, handmade hook-and-eye clasps and fully handmade chain. He sets mostly Royston and Kingman turquoise, along with Campitos, white buffalo, and — on at least one set — a rare batch of Australian turquoise sourced straight from the house's own vault.

The Standing & The Line

Tom's work runs from small $150 rings to a $2,700 collaborative squash blossom, and it sells across established galleries — Santa Fe Sun Handmade, which titled his profile "Five Generations in Silver," among them. The T.Skies relationship is a real one: a dedicated guest-artist night, pieces he donated for viewer giveaways, and at least one large squash blossom built as a straight collaboration — his silver, the house's turquoise, in-house beadwork. And the line runs forward through him: the young Diné/Yuki smith Ivan Tillotson learned jewelry at Ronald Tom's bench.

In Motion

The best place to meet him is his own Saturday guest-artist show on T.Skies — thirty-odd pieces walked through in his own words, from the adjustable stamped rings to the corn-maiden necklaces to that Slayer cuff.

Watch — “Navajo bumpout stamp on thick silver with Ronald Tom Navajo Silversmith.”: