Zuni Jewelry

The Zuni Indians live primarily on a small reservation in New Mexico. They have made jewelry for over a thousand years. They began by using mainly stones and either drilling or inlaying the stones. This was before they were introduced to silver work in the 1870's by the Navajo. Today they still are fascinated by the use of stones to create beauty. In this way, Zuni artisans use the colors of the stones - turquoise, coral, mother-of-pearl, jet, lapis, sugalite, pink mussel shell, opal, etc - as a color palette to create designs on jewelry. They use small stones to create cluster designs, they also inlay stones to make pictures in stone - birds, animals, kachinas, scenes. Terms you may hear with their jewelry making are : needlepoint, petit point, cluster, channel, inlay. (These terms will be discussed in later posts). The use of silver is mainly to frame or hold the stones and does not tend to be heavy or bold. They let the stones speak for themselves. The Zuni families each try to develop their own style. In fact, in the earlier days, before artists signed their work, you could often tell who made a piece of Zuni jewelry by the design. Zuni also are incredible fetish carvers, as discussed in another post. Which is logical, given their unique capability of utilizing stones in different ways.