Monday, September 04, 2006

Fetish buying in Zuni

This past week we made a special trip to Zuni Pueblo to meet with our old carver friends and see some that we have known about for years, but not had the opportunity to deal directly with until now.

We met with Lena Boone again. She showed us a couple of carvings
done by her nephew, Robert Michael. She was very emotional about them because they were reminiscent of the of carving her grandfather, the legendary Teddy Weahkee.

Here are Robert's works, one in shell with turquoise and one from two-pronged antler: We also met with Jeff Tsalabutie, one of Zuni’s best. Here is one of his pieces in sugilite: Gibbs Othole gave us a look a some of his work before it was finished. We were able chose some for later delivery, like this large turquoise bear with a shell fish: Dee Edaakie was also with us in Gibbs’ kitchen and we were able to acquire some his pieces, like this white mountain lion, as well: Alonzo Esalio’s family was preparing for dances the next day, (that's Alonzo and his daughter, Gayla) with flurry of corn grinding and baking, But he was able to finish up this piece for us: None of these fetish carvings are on our web site yet. But they will be shortly, along with a number of other new acquisitions.

We’ll also be adding new Santo Domingo jewelry acquired during a recent trip to the Santo Domingo Pueblo, so check in at the Native-JewelryLink site later too.
Thanks for joining us at Tribal Artery, the blog from Aboriginals: Art of the First Person.