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Lot 164Y

A Gail Bird and Yazzie Johnson five-strand necklace, circa 1980

28 August 2025, 12:00 PDT
Los Angeles

Sold for US$4,864 inc. premium

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Gail Bird and Yazzie Johnson

Kewa (Santo Domingo)/Laguna, (b. 1949) and Diné (Navajo), (b. 1946), a five-strand silver, coral and glass bead necklace with silver and gold-mounted gem beads, circa 1980, the closure stamped with maker's mark: Y.
wearable length 29 1/2in; gross weight approximately 161.5g

Footnotes

See Pardue, Diana F., Shared Images: The Innovative Jewelry of Yazzie Johnson & Gail Bird, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, NM, 2007, p. 38, pl. 13, for a similar example, dated 1980, in the collection of the Wheelright Museum in Santa Fe. "Johnson and Bird also created their first necklace with satellites, or small bezel-set stones that are inserted in the bead strands, for this show at the Dewey-Kofron Gallery. It was a trade bead necklace based on a South American milagro prototype... Johnson and Bird used the white heart beads because they were the most common beads traded to Native people throughout the world. Many cultures used them as the base of a necklace and added special tokens, amulets, or milagros. Johnson and Bird wanted to emulate the look rather than the symbolic intent." Ibid, p.37

Additional information

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