Native American Bracelets

Distinctive Costume Jewellery Bracelets from the Navajo Homelands.

For thousands of years Native American Indians have been mining, designing and wearing their own distinctive form of costume jewellery. In the south west corner of the country, down near New Mexico, the Navajo and pueblo tribes discovered the distinctive turquoise stone and turned them into necklaces, pendants, bracelets, belts and brooches. The relationship between the turquoise stones and human culture is, like all relationships in nature, mysterious and impenetrable. Out of the rock, the Indians say, they were born. The quality of the stones, its hardness, colour and depth depends. Over the years, designs began to reflect the influences from other parts of the United States. They adopted ideas from Art Deco and the Modernist Movement. Today, many contemporary Indian jewellers are designing non-traditional costume jewellery pieces to attract new markets from all over the world. Turquoise, once a luxury intended solely for the nobility is now a sign of relative wealth. Wearing turquoise is more than just a statement of fashion, it is regarded as a demonstration of understanding for all that is natural and earthly.