Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Surviving Desires: Making and Selling Native Jewellery in the American Southwest

Surviving Desires: Making and Selling Native Jewellery in the American Southwest

Lidchi, Henrietta

Paperback

BeautyIndigenous Art of the AmericasRegional: Southwest

Publisher Price: $34.95

ISBN10: 0806148500
ISBN13: 9780806148502
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: Apr 13 2015
Pages: 272
Weight: 2.90
Height: 0.90 Width: 8.30 Depth: 11.60
Language: English
In its classic union of gleaming silver and blue turquoise, Native American jewellery of the Southwest is an iconic art form. Internationally recognized and locally significant, Native American jewellery has a compelling history--it represents the persistence of tradition while encapsulating the vitality of Native American communities and the continuously transforming nature of the jewellery makers' art.

Author Henrietta Lidchi focuses on jewellery in the cultural economy of the Southwest, exploring jewellery making as a decorative art form in constant transition. She describes the jewellery as subject to a number of desires, controlled at different times by government agencies, individual entrepreneurs, traders, curators, and Native American communities. Lidchi explores the jewellery as craft, material culture, commodity, and adornment. Considering the impact of tourism, she discusses fakes in the market and the artists' desires to codify traditional styles, explaining how these factors can affect stylistic development and value. Surviving Desires suggests the complexity and reinvention innate to Native American jewellery as a commercial craft.

Drawing on the author's archival research and on interviews she conducted with Native American jewellers and with traders, dealers, and curators, this volume examines British collecting, exchanges between British and American institutions, and the development of the British Museum's contemporary collection.

Lavishly illustrated with 300 color photographs of jewellery in the British Museum, the National Museums Scotland, and major collections in the United States, Surviving Desires presents many previously unpublished pieces and showcases works by Native American jewellers who include the best-known names in the field today. The volume is a visually stunning exploration of the symbolic, economic, and communal value of jewellery in the American Southwest.

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