Native American Turquoise Old Pawn Jewelry: How to Identify Antique Navajo Bracelets from 1900-1930

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Native American jewelry expert Dr. Mark Sublette of Medicine Man Gallery with 25 years experience in the Indian art business gives tips on how to identify early Navajo bracelets. Excellent tutorial for beginning to advanced collectors on the characteristics one looks for when buying Native American old pawn jewelry.
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Native American Turquoise Old Pawn Jewelry: How to Identify Antique Navajo Bracelets from 1900-1930
Today I'd like to talk to you about Navajo bracelets or Diné; the Diné is what they call themselves. This is a Navajo bracelet that dates from about the 1920s, and this is the kind of piece that I want to discuss - the Navajo antique bracelets that came from about 1900 to 1930s.
Often, the early ones would use ingot; they would have underneath you could look and you would see a crackalure in the silver, and this comes from them using the coinage (either Mexican pesos or silver dollars bracelets) like this; you want to look for wear on authentic antique Navajo bracelets.
This particular Navajo Indian bracelet shows wear along the edge. In fact, if you look you can even see where it's worn so much that the bezel or the thing that holds the turquoise is ground down to the turquoise itself - that's a good thing. You might think it's not, but it really is.
Also, you'll see cracks in some of the turquoise stones, and that's okay if it's an early piece. If it's a piece that is all about the turquoise - say, a piece of Lander or Bisbee, you wouldn't want that. But, in an early Navajo bracelet, it's fine to have cracks and little disruption in the in the matrix on the stone; it shows wear, and wear is important because we're buying these pieces for their age.
If you're going to pay for an antique 1920s bracelet, you want to get a 1920s authentic Navajo bracelet, and I can assure you there are lots of Navajo bracelets that are made in an old style, that aren't from the 20s or 30s or 1910 time frame.
The earliest Native American Old Pawn Jewelry would use handmade wire; we call it hand-wrought wire. They didn't buy it, they actually would pull the wire itself, so it's important to look for an inconsistency in the diameter and the size of the wire. This will help you point to an earlier bracelet.
Also, a lot of the turquoise stones that you'll find in these vintage Navajo bracelets (like this) were simply surface finds; they were not great stones. Really the earliest turquoise mines didn't open up until really the 20s, so you had a few before that, but a lot of them really started later than 20s, so a lot of the early Navajo bracelets are going to just have very simple green or blue stones.
Now, an antique Navajo bracelet like this may have all been blue at one time. The problem is when they made it, they didn't know the porosity of the stones, and this is actually measured by mohs, which has to do with the density of the stone. So, a turquoise stone like this, which is green, may have in the beginning been blue, but with the wear and usage of the stone (the wearer would - the oils in their skin would be absorbed and it turns it to a green) That's actually not a bad thing; I like to see stones in early Navajo bracelets that are multi-mixed colors.
So, when you see a bracelet that has different colors of stone, there's wear, you see wear along the bezels, and it has simplicity, and hopefully is ingot, that points to an authentic early Navajo Indian bracelet. So, those are the kind of criteria that you want to look for when you're looking for early 1900 to 1930 Navajo or Diné old pawn bracelets.