Featured Native American sterling necklace

This necklace is not marked anywhere but, test positive for sterling silver .
Anyone know who or how old or which tribe made it ?

Thank You

 

Southwestern. Looks Navajo and older to me, maybe 50s ish.

 

It's either Navajo or the best wanna-be I've seen in a while. The stringing looks odd but the rest looks dead on. I've never seen a native made necklace on chain like that.

 

Maybe one of the thousands of fakes from the Philippines/Indonesia ,could be anything..... https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/native-american-indian-art-fake-forgery-hopi-zuni0/

 

Hi Holly, can you show me some examples of fake ones like mine ? Everything on mine test positive for sterling, if mine is fake, it's a good thing I only paid $1 for it at my local thrift store .

 

Fakes/copies.. depends on how they were represented when they were sold.They look like original NA made items,copied from 40+ years of photos in Arizona Highways magazines,various hobbyist magazines,photos at gem and mineral shows,etc. 10's of thousands made by hobbyist,snowbirds at the rock shops Arizona and New Mexico.If they don't have an identified mark,they could have been made by anyone and if you read the article those often had fake marks.

 

Take a nice clear photo of the stone and item and ask about it here, http://www.turquoisepeople.com/c/identifying-discovering
if they can id the stone it will at least give a region.

 

It can be sterling & still be fake as a Native American made article. The gift shops at the Grand Canyon are full of Indian-y looking items. When I was there, only one sold NAM items exclusively. The others all had a little section carefully labeled as NAM; rest of the stuff was made elsewhere.

There are good quality fakes & poor quality ones.

 

Having the origin area of turquoise means little,turquoise from U.S. locations has been sold for over 60 years to many countries.

 

Whether fake or true, I like it and think it has a graceful shape.

 

Billy, it's real silver & real Turquoise & I've seen many strung on that type of wire .
You can call it Southwest Style, only because you can't identify the artist.
Yes many non native items are in the marketplace....but.....let's not forget that the Authentic Native items still outweigh the fakes....by a mile !

 

It's really LOVELY Billy, .. I wouldn't hesitate to drape that around my neck, VERY NICE indeed !!! .. Joy.

 

Is that a "W"?

 

it looks like a W......but that may just be the marking on the clasp.

 

It is a lovely, very elegant necklace, Billy. My guess is late 70s.
If I were to sell it, I would call it Southwest style, as komo said. If pieces aren't signed, or 'signed by design' - unmistakeably made in ... era by famous maker such and such - it is impossible to say for sure.

The style resembles or is inspired by what we now call Navajo, as obb said.
But in the early years of SW Native silversmithing there was a general fashionable style made by all silversmiths, based on demand.
Although turquoise was already being mined, much of the early turquoise in NA jewellery was imported from Persia and Afghanistan.
Persian turquoise is still highly valued, as is Mediterranean coral.
The appreciation of local turquoise, and the valuation of turquoise from one mine over another, came later. Nowadays many Native silversmiths work with turquoise from around the globe again.

Out of the fashions of the early days, the Navajo style developed as more Art Nouveau and designs introduced by the Spanish, and the Zuni as more Art Deco with distinct Zuni designs. The style we now know as Hopi, based on archeological motifs, was developed for a silversmithing project for Hopi war veterans.
But artists being artists, the style lines were never rigid.

I agree, it has. I know of some silversmiths here in the Netherlands who have worked with Sleeping Beauty turquoise. But never in a NA style.
And turquoise from other countries has always been used in the SW as well. Some turquoise from Hubei, China, resembles US turquoise and is now also used by NA artists.

 

It doesn't look like a maker's mark. In this case I would expect a maker's mark to be located on one of the pendants, usually together with a sterling mark.

 

By no means all NA or specifically Navajo stuff is marked, of course, especially the older pieces. Many of the rings I own, which have real age to them, have no marks at all.

Fake is a misnomer, especially given this is silver and turquoise, so the components are real. A fake would be something with wannabee markings, for a start. In the style of, is perhaps a better term.

I don't see any reason this isn't Navajo - and a dollar is a heck of a bargain, anyhow.

 

Yes, a lot of pre-1980 NA jewellery is not marked. The coveted Old Pawn jewellery ( the real deal, not what some sellers call Old Pawn) is rarely marked.

The decision to only accept marked NA jewellery as NA was a bureaucratic one. In my opinion it denied the history and strong tradition of NA jewellery making.
If there had been an assay system, or quality control system with additional registered marking by a recognized organization (like the second Mesa 'Hopi Guild'), this wouldn't have happened.

Anyway, whoever made Billy's necklace, it is lovely and a real bargain.

 

After snooping around some....I'm going to echo Owned , & say...IMHO...this is authentic Navajo....& maybe Fred Harvey era.
It's classic pearl & Barrel .....I'm just not 100% on when the twisted metal wire was 1st used to string the beads.

 

I've got rings - and a few other bits - bought when I first went to the SW USA in the late 70s and early 80s. They aren't marked, and were certainly not new then. Fred Harvey era it might well be, it's well made and good quality.