6 Different styles of jewelry from Native American tribes

 Native Americans have a vast history of jewelry making; their experience in jewelry designing dates back to almost 12000 years old. They used shells, fish bones, rocks, and coral, to design jewelry. People started taking more interest in native American jewelry in the late 1800s when the native Americans used the jewelry as collateral in trading with the European settlers.

 

Navajo is the oldest tribe and most popular native American tribe and is known for its exceptional jewelry-making techniques and eccentric styles. Metals like silver and turquoise are the best indicators of Native American jewelry. Some of the Native American Turquoise Jewelry standard designs are petals, leaves, and butterflies. Some famous jewelry is Silver Navajo Pearls Bracelets, turquoise earrings, and necklace. Most of the Native American Turquoise Jewelry is handmade, and you will have difficulty finding the similarities between the two jewelry. The Navajo tribe uses precious stones and metals to make jewelry. Even within the tribe, the different artists have different signature jewelry, and their work is different from each other. There are different styles and patterns of native American jewelry that one needs to know about. 

Some of the popular types of native American jewelry are mentioned below-

 

1. The single stone jewelry style

The single stone jewelry style is one of the most common jewelry designs that you can find in native American jewelry. Turquoise is the most popular stone used in Native American jewelry design, and you can find the single stone earring, necklace, earrings, bracelets. Other than the turquoise, some of the other stones include onyx, opal, calcite, and jet.

 

2.    The row style

The row style design has multiple rows and is layered one on top of another. The horizontal row sets prove to be the best designs for the bracelets or hand bands. They use different stones and metals like silver or white gold to make the final jewelry design. Sometimes, you can also find row designs in climber stud earrings.

 

3.    The random cluster design

As the name suggests, you might assume that the stones and gems are randomly clustered when looking at the random clustered jewelry designs. However, this assumption and observation are far from the truth. The artists have to put much thought into organizing the random cluster. The idea behind random sets is to showcase the brilliance of the gemstones without making any cuts to give them a shape. You cannot find any pattern in a random cluster, and each piece of jewelry is different from the other. Artists put much thought into organizing random clusters that will look beautiful and a clustered mess.

 

4.    The rainbow fashion

The rainbow style jewelry is multi-color jewelry that uses different gemstones or gemstones of different colors. The rainbow pattern looks beautiful in pendants, earrings, and bracelets. The other color gemstones can be arranged in patterns like row patterns, clustered patterns, and random cluster patterns. The rainbow-style native American jewelry like the Silver Navajo Pearls Bracelets with different hues goes well with your brunch outfit, square pattern summer dresses, and basic dark t-shirts. 

 

5.    The inlay style pattern

Zuni tribe was the first to master the art of inlay craft, and later on, the Navajo tribe also learned the art of inlay crafting. The inlay style pattern gives native jewelry designers more freedom to make their designs and embed their vision into different styles. In this design pattern, precious stones are flattened, designed, cut, and polished to fit the metal molds. The inlay style is further divided into channel inlay and stone to stone inlay.

 

6.    The overlay style pattern

The Hopi tribe mastered the overlay style pattern, and as the name suggests, the outlay style pattern is the opposite of the inlay style pattern. The overlay pattern is 3-D design jewelry and is a popular style for making bracelets. The designers use one metal for the base and stick another metal to form the pattern on the bracelet, for example, taking gold as a base and using silver to design the way.

 

The designers don’t have to make random 3-D patterns on the bracelet, but they also design patterns that tell a story. The storyteller overlay pattern is a popular choice among the youths.

 

Conclusion

People love native American jewelry because it is unique and are handmade. Other styles in native American jewelry making like the cluster style, file work, and stamp work. People need to understand the different types and find their ideal style or pattern.