Since the publication of Hallmarks of the Southwest in 1989 Ambrose Lincoln and Ambrose Roanhorse have been unfortunately described as the same person, which has caused their jewelry to be misidentified for decades. In fact, they were two distinctly different individuals. Although both were Navajo silversmiths, Lincoln was more than a decade younger than Roanhorse and worked in a different style.
So how did this happen?
In the beginning Ambrose Lincoln and Ambrose Roanhorse were listed separately, and on the same page, in the appendix of Navajo silversmiths working in 1940 in John Adair’s book The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths:
In 1980 Mark Bahti published Collecting Southwestern Native American Jewelry, and incorporated an appendix of hallmarks for many prominent Native American silversmiths. He included the mark for Ambrose Lincoln:
But something went wrong during Barton Wright’s research for Hallmarks of the Southwest and he wasn’t able to discern that Roanhorse and Lincoln were two different people:
Barton Wright made no corrections and continued to confuse the two Ambrose’s in the second edition of Hallmarks of the Southwest.
Wright’s entry of Roanhorse and/or Lincoln was debated among dealers and collectors for years, with the conclusion that they must have been two different silversmiths. Unfortunately once something appears in print it is then considered gospel and nearly impossible to correct.
Jonathan Batkin divulged much biographical information about Ambrose Roanhorse in his 2008 publication The Native American Curio Trade In New Mexico, also observing that John Adair’s field notes of 1940 identified Ambrose Lincoln as working at Zuni, and provided irrefutable evidence Roanhorse and Lincoln were not the same person.
Still the question remained, did Roanhorse sign with the A-in-keystone hallmark? If not, then how did he hallmark his work? The problem was solved when California Academy of Sciences made their collections database available via the Internet. CAS is in possession of the Elkus Collection, one of the most thoroughly documented collections of Indian art from the 1940s/50s era. In the collection are ten pieces of Roanhorse’s jewelry, three of which are hallmarked, here is a link to the Ambrose Roanhorse items in their collection, CAS Collections Database.
Once representative pieces of work with both hallmarks could be compared side-by-side it didn’t take much to figure out the rightful owner of each hallmark.
It is now abundantly apparent that Ambrose Roanhorse used a stick figure of a horse with his initials AR forming the legs…
and that Ambrose Lincoln signed his work with a capital A inside a keystone shaped design.
To further the argument, below are signed pieces of work by both men and a discussion of their styles and skills.
Ambrose Roanhorse was one of the most influential Navajo silversmiths of his time and became famous for hand wrought, traditional old style Navajo silver. When he used stone settings they usually consisted of one large stone set in the center of the piece. He was considered a master of his craft and won many awards for his hand wrought work; his plain silver concho belt took a first place ribbon at the 1956 Gallup Ceremonial. His work was highly prized and compared favorably alongside the highest quality master silversmiths of the time including Georg Jensen. While many pieces of his work do not bear his hallmark, they are distinctive for his use of bold, simple design and high quality of workmanship.
Here are two typical plain silver pieces made by Ambrose Roanhorse.
Ambrose Lincoln, on the other hand, worked in the Gallup/Zuni area for C.G. Wallace and Charles Kelsey, among others, and most commonly produced cast silver pieces, often with turquoise channel inlay. At the 1956 Gallup Ceremonial, mentioned earlier in connection with Roanhorse, Lincoln won a second place grand prize for a bracelet with channel work inlay that was a collaboration with Zuni lapidarist Lambert Homer; thus establishing that Lincoln was an excellent silversmith in his own right.
Illustrated below are two pieces by Ambrose Lincoln.
So, as we made clear in Reassessing Hallmarks of Native Southwest Jewelry, Lincoln’s jewelry, though good, should not be mistaken for Roanhorse’s (who was considered a master silversmith) nor should it command the same value as Roanhorse’s.
Following are short biographies of Roanhorse and Lincoln, more information is available in Reassessing Hallmarks of Native Southwest Jewelry.
Ambrose Roanhorse
Ambrose Roanhorse was born about 1904 near Ganado, Arizona and started learning silverwork at the age of nine by helping his grandfather, the famed early silversmith Peshlakai. Roanhorse moved to Santa Fe about 1928 where he worked at Southwest Arts and Crafts as a silversmith. He was hired as the first instructor for the silversmithing classes at the Santa Fe Indian School, where he taught hand forging methods from 1931 to 1939.
In 1936 Roanhorse became involved with the Indian Arts and Crafts Board’s program for promoting (and hallmarking) hand made Indian jewelry and in turn became Kenneth Chapman’s assistant, inspecting and stamping the jewelry that was submitted.
In 1939 Roanhorse was selected as director of the Wingate Guild, and left Santa Fe for the headquarters at the Wingate Vocational School. In 1941 the guild expanded to become the Navajo Arts and Crafts Guild, where he served as assistant manager for a few years.
In 1954 Roanhorse was one of twelve American Indian artists honored (additionally Dorothy Dunn Kramer, an Anglo art teacher was honored) by the French government, awarded with the Ordre des Palmes Académiques, the French Republic Award for his distinguished achievements in silver work.
After retirement from the Bureau of Indian Affairs he continued to teach silversmithing at various venues. Roanhorse passed away in 1982 and is buried in St. Michael’s, AZ.
Ambrose Lincoln
Ambrose Lincoln was born in 1917, and graduated from Wingate Vocational High School in 1939, the term before Roanhorse became an instructor there. Ironically, Lincoln worked as the silversmithing instructor at Santa Fe Indian School in 1942, three years after Roanhorse left the position to work with the Navajo Guild.
Lincoln worked primarily in the Zuni and Gallup areas, in the 1940s for C.G. Wallace and Charles Kelsey.
Ambrose Lincoln died in 1989 and is buried in Gallup, NM.
Update August 2019: These hallmarks have been properly identified in the third and fourth editions of Bille Hougart’s Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks.
Originally published on our Goodreads.com blog April 3, 2016.