Here in the Southwest, Native American jewelry is always in style, but in recent years its popularity has steadily increased worldwide. In fact, according to Vogue Paris, traditional Indian Jewelry is back in HIGH fashion this spring.
The Navajo Squash Blossom necklace, an icon for Southwestern Native American jewelry and culture, is finding its way back into pop culture and onto the necklines of fashionistas everywhere. We decided to pay tribute to one of the most enduring art forms in Native American jewelry, the Squash Blossom necklace, as its popularity is nearing an all-time high.
The evolution of the Squash Blossom necklace started with the simple silver bead. Since crafting silver beads was one of the most difficult techniques for Native American silversmiths to master, silver bead necklaces became the most prized pieces of jewelry.
Early silver necklaces consisted of large, heavy, and plainly simple beads. Artists obtained the silver from American coins or Mexican pesos and created beads by punching large holes into half-formed spheres, soldering them together and then stringing them on a heavy cord. The resulting necklace was worn as a simple long single strand.
Pendants followed, usually as a Naja shape, meaning “crescent” to the Navajos. While it had no symbolic significance to the Navajos, the Naja was adapted from the Spaniards’ decorative horse’s headstall, which was thought to ward off evil spirits. Hammering coin silver or casting coin silver using sandstone or tufa stone originally created the crescent-shaped Naja we see today – a definitive part of the Squash Blossom necklace.
Later, Navajo artists added just a few “pomegranate” blossom beads to the long silver necklace on either side of the central Naja pendant. The pomegranate bead was a short bulbous sphere with flanges flowing out into three or four short petals. The Spaniards of the day wore silver pomegranate blossoms as trouser fasteners – an aesthetic quickly adopted by the Navajos.
The Squash Blossom necklace with its characteristic “spreading” beads has been worn as a symbol of wealth in Navajo culture for decades. The flanges of the squash petals were eventually elongated in proportion to the silver bead – at least double its size. From simple utensils and coin silver to modern tools and meticulous execution, generations of silversmiths continue to create spectacular variations of these traditional necklaces.
We invite you to join us in our celebration of this classic art form.
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Squash Blossom Necklaces
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posted on Saturday, September 18, 2010 2:48:03 AM MDT