Posted 11 years ago
Curiouslnda
(1 item)
My father bought this bracelet for me
56 years ago from a trading post on
the NavajoReservation near Farmington,
New Mexico. I have recently been trying
find information on the type of turquoise
and possibly the age of it. He was told it
it was " family pawn". I'm not sure what
that means.
Beautiful I love the color ! It is a keeper :-)
By "family pawn" he was probably referring to the pieces that were made for friends and family, it is usually unmarked, handwrought, and really high quality. Some even have inscriptions, like a belt buckle I have that says something like "To dad from son." They are generally kept in the family and used as collateral at pawn shops. GENUINE dead pawn is very, very scarce. People throw the "pawn" around without having any idea what it means, so your father was probably just repeating what someone told him. This is more of a regular piece though, a souvenir from the Southwest.
Don't put any stock in turquoise mine names. Its complete bunk. If you are very observant and are exposed to turquoise long enough, you will see the same type of stone referred to by 5 different names. Not to mention that mines don't even produce 100% homogenous material. Even the experts in Native American jewelry will tell you this, nobody can tell with certainty where a stone came from just by looking at it. People just go on Google, see something that may look similar, and call their piece that name, and then someone sees THAT and calls THEIR piece by that mine. Its a giant mess of confusion.
I can't really see much of it from just this one photo, but it appears to be from the 20's-40's. Definitely Navajo.