May 14th, 2020: Cast Away! - Native Cast Jewelry

Native American cast jewelry is traditionally produced by pouring molten metal into molds carved out of sandstone or the softer tufa, a stone formed from organic ash.

Whereas stamps can be used hundreds of times on countless pieces of jewelry, casts made of sandstone or tufa have a very limited lifespan. Each mold only survives a handful of castings, while some artists, like Aaron Anderson, uses them only once, so that each piece is unique.

In early Navajo cast work, you can almost see the molten ore in the sinuous designs. Later pieces have a sculptural quality hard to achieve with other techniques: from the organic simplicity of Charles Loloma to the exuberance of Tony Abeyta’s monumental cuff, this is truly wearable art.