Ronnie Henry — Navajo/Diné Silversmith

Navajo, from Crownpoint, New Mexico. The smith who makes the whole thing himself.

Ronnie Henry does something that's gotten rare. He makes his own silver plate, rolls his own wire, cuts and polishes his own stones — the entire piece, start to finish, by his own hand. "It's pretty rare these days," he says, "to see someone do everything from scratch." His signature work, a "Broken Arrow" necklace in 14-karat gold, diamonds, and natural Candelaria turquoise, was cast as eight separate pieces from a single carved tufa stone — one stone, eight pours, one necklace. That's the kind of maker he is: patient, whole-process, and — by his own insistence — humble about it. "I try to stay humble," he told T.Skies. "It does make me a better artist too."

The Smith

He's Diné, from the Crownpoint area of the New Mexico Navajo Nation — his own retail site fills in a boyhood in Coyote Canyon and a family that moved to Rochester, Minnesota in 1975 to make and sell their jewelry from a shop of their own. The craft ran in the house: his mother, Louise, was a weaver and silversmith, and his older brother, Ernie, taught him to design and build traditional-style jewelry. T.Skies has carried his work and interviewed him directly — Mathew's own read on it: "higher-end gallery-level stuff, natural stones, really good quality work."

The Work

Henry's signature method is tufa casting, done completely from scratch — no pre-made components. But he's more than a caster: he hand-fabricates and inlays too, setting Ironwood, Morenci turquoise, and natural coral, and he sets a distinctive Royston Ribbon turquoise, its green-and-tan matrix patterned like ribbon. Watch his finish and you understand the reputation — as one T.Skies host put it on air, handling a Royston Ribbon naja of his, the finish is "delicious." He draws his designs from his parents' work, from the scenery around him, and from dreams — he keeps a sketchpad by the bed. And about eighty percent of what he makes, he trades with other artists: "We pretty much take care of ourselves as artists that way."

In Motion & More

You can see one of his najas — the Royston Ribbon piece — on a T.Skies Thursday show, and hear him in his own words in T.Skies' interview with him. His own jewelry lives at RJH Native Jewelry.

Watch — “Interview with Ronnie Henry Navajo Silversmith”: