Besides discussing the history of hallmarks applied to Native American silver, one of the other topics we hoped to raise awareness of in Reassessing Hallmarks of Native Southwest Jewelry: Artists, Traders, Guilds, and the Government was that the style of jewelry that hallmarks are applied upon is just as important as the hallmark itself. To demonstrate the point we included as many examples as we could of jewelry made in differing styles by a single silversmith. We wanted to show the hallmark itself is only one key to attribution and verification when identifying hallmarked jewelry.
Reference guides devoted solely to hallmark identification, with a paragraph or less of biographical information, and no illustrations of typical jewelry made by the artist, are just that—guides to identification. Experience, perspective and logic are also required to make accurate attributions.
For instance, let’s consider the hallmark for Hopi silversmith Homer Vance.
Little was known of Homer Vance when Margaret Wright conducted her research prior to 1972 for Hopi Silver: The History and Hallmarks of Hopi Silversmithing since Vance had died in 1961. Her sources of information for Vance’s hallmark entry were limited and included a survey of Hopi silversmiths conducted in 1941 by Alfred Whiting for the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, John Adair’s 1944 book The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths, and the Hopi Silver Project conducted by the Museum of Northern Arizona in 1938/1939. Wright listed Vance’s mark as “Not Definite,” indicating she knew he had a hallmark, but was unable to corroborate it. Here is the entry from the Third Edition of Hopi Silver:
By the time Barton Wright published Hallmarks of the Southwest in 1989 his research had revealed that Vance’s hallmark consisted of “Stamped initials in Gothic print,” suggesting a typeface that includes serifs, such as Times New Roman. However, the publisher chose to illustrate the mark with a sans-serif style, here is the actual entry from the book:
This unfortunate choice of fonts by Schiffer Publishing has caused considerable confusion ever since.
The Wrights discovered that Homer Vance was born into the Sun Clan in 1882 at Shipaulovi, started working silver around 1920, worked at various stores, including at the Grand Canyon for a year, and passed away in 1961.
Additionally, during our research we found Vance worked as an actor in western films, was employed as a silversmith in 1927 at R.M. Bruchman’s in Winslow, ran the shop Coolidge Indian Arts in Hollywood with his wife Sarah Coolidge until 1938 and demonstrated silver at the Golden Gate Exposition in 1939. Here is a 1936 advertisement for Coolidge Indian Arts:
So, from the foregoing information what kind of jewelry could one logically speculate Vance created during his career? First, think about the style of jewelry prevalent in the 1930s, especially in locations catering to tourists, such as the Grand Canyon and Hollywood; consider the jewelry made in the 1930s by Hopi silversmiths working in urban areas, such as Morris Robinson and Ralph Tawangyawma. It would most likely be typical tourist-style jewelry, with stamp work filling the empty silver spaces; perhaps a delicate bracelet for a woman’s wrist, with a turquoise setting on top of a split shank band. Something that looked Navajo and appealed to tourists.
Something like this:
Which happens to be hallmarked like this:
Considering this hallmark consists of the correct initials for Homer Vance, and the font is consistent with the time period (reference the H most often used by Ralph Tawangyawma), as well as the crescent mark above the initials that could easily represent the sun (for his clan), then this is the hallmark used by Homer Vance.
Yet a search of the Internet for “homer vance hopi” results in images of pins, pendants and belt buckles made in this style:
These pieces are typically 1970s in materials and construction, the large cluster work and wide sawtooth bezels are indicative of Navajo work, though it could also be Zuni. And they are hallmarked like this:
It’s not difficult to see how the entry for Homer Vance in Hallmarks of the Southwest has caused this erroneous identification, nor why dealers adhere to this attribution; except that Homer Vance was dead by the time these pieces were made.
Is it realistic to believe that a Hopi silversmith who worked during the height of the tourist era, and died in 1961, would have made Zuni style cluster work prevalent in the 1970s? No, it is not. And it is time to set the record straight. This hallmark was used by a Navajo or Zuni silversmith working in the 1970s, who has yet to be identified. It’s understandable how this hallmark could be credited to Homer Vance if the hallmark alone is used for identification, but much more difficult to justify the attribution once the style of jewelry is considered.
Just because pieces are signed HV does not mean they were made by Homer Vance. Just as not everything marked FP was made by Fred Peshlakai or Frank Patania. The lack of the identification of another silversmith who may have used these initials does not mean Homer Vance was the only Indian silversmith who ever used the initials HV as a hallmark.
A hallmark with no other information about the jewelry it is applied to is only a mark within a blank canvas, especially something as vague as initials, and there is nothing to guide in determining the maker without knowing the technical achievements of the artist. Though it may appear some hallmarks are self-explanatory, consider that they may be fakes, or they may have been used by someone else (perhaps even a relative) after the death of the silversmith.
For these reasons it should be cautioned that accurate attributions can only be made when the style and quality of the jewelry is considered along with the hallmark.
Update June 2016 – The third edition of Bille Hougart’s Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks has corrected the hallmark for Homer Vance.
Originally published on our Goodreads.com blog March 15, 2016.