Displaying items by tag: navajo

“I didn’t think in a million years that something like this was gonna happen in my life,” said Lee Yazzie, a famed Navajo jeweler, as he stood next to an exhibit of his and his family’s jewelry work at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in New York. Yazzie, who has worked as a silversmith since the late 1960’s said that, as he departed for New York, he told people back home that he would only believe what was happening when he would see it.

“Glittering World: the Navajo Jewelry of the Yazzie Family” is a retrospective into the decades-long work of the Gallup, New Mexico, family in the intricate art of Navajo jewelry design.

Another group of sacred Hopi masks was gaveled away at a Paris auction Friday, over the objections of tribe members and the U.S. Embassy in Paris, Agence France Presse has reported.

In Hopi tradition, the masks don’t merely represent spirits, but embody them, making it a sacrilege to collect and display them, or otherwise use them outside the ceremonies for which they were made.

An appeal to a Paris court on Thursday failed, the news agency reported, and the Eve auction house went ahead with the sale, which also included Navajo artifacts. However, only nine of the 29 masks were sold, for an average price of about $20,800. A 19th century mask fetched the highest price, $51,000.