Hopi Silver Pin with Native Basket Design [SOLD]

Made with a basket design highly traditional to the Hopis, this is a beautiful silver pin by acclaimed Hopi jeweler Howard Sice. Crafted with incredible precision and detail, the pin features a coiled portion in the center which segues into a motif of customary symbols going around the fantastic basket weave coil in the bottom of the bowl. These symbols include a square as well as a stepped design generally believed to represent mountains. This opens into a circular line going around the pin which then has more uniform symbols going around the outer rim of the pin.

Texturally, the pin both looks and feels great when observing the dichotomy between the rougher, carved silver and the smooth polished silver. It is very appealing and a wonderful model of time-honored Hopi baskets.

The back side of the pin is signed Sice.

Jewelry artist Howard Sice is known for his etching technique, creating delicate designs on a silver surface. He has won numerous awards and has exhibited at Santa Fe's Indian Market, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, and Arizona State Museum.

"Howard Sice is of Hopi and Laguna Pueblo heritage and was raised in the Laguna village of Paraje. During his youth he spent time with Hopi aunts on the mesas. Born in Winslow, Sice spent twenty years in the Air Force and is a veteran of the Vietnam War. He married Patricia Smith (Navajo) who is from a family of jewelers, and Sice learned the basics of silversmithing from her father in 1972." [Messier & Messier, 2014:135]

Condition: good condition with minor scratches

Provenance: this Hopi Silver Pin with Native Basket Design is  from the collection of a client of Adobe Gallery

Reference: Reassessing Hallmarks of Native Southwest Jewelry—Artists, Traders, Guilds, and the Government, by Pat Messier & Kim Messier. Schiffer Publishing, 2014

TAGS: Hopi Pueblo, Laguna Pueblo, Southwest Indian Jewelry, Howard Sice