Santo Domingo Jewelry

While contemporary Indian jewelry has followed many paths, the work most closely linked to the jewelry creations of ancestral Puebloans is the stone and shell necklaces, pendants, rings and bracelets produced at Santo Domingo Pueblo in New Mexico. Ray Lovato’s heishi necklaces and flat stone earrings provide one of the best modern examples of how ancient Puebloan jewelry looked. (Continued below)

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Sleeping Beauty Turquoise Tab Necklace - Ray Lovato (#41) Santo Domingo Jewelry Handstrung Natural Sleeping Beauty Turquoise Tab Necklace 19 1/2" long Watch the Video! $495.00	Cripple Creek Turquoise Tab Necklace - Ray Lovato (#40) Santo Domingo Jewelry Handmade Necklace strung with Natural Cripple Creek Turquoise 19 1/2" long Watch the Video! $495.00	Kingman Turquoise Tab Necklace - Ray Lovato (#39) Santo Domingo Jewelry Handmade Necklace strung with Natural Kingman Turquoise 20" long Watch the Video! $495.00
Olivetta & Clamshell Heishi Necklace - Josephine Coriz (#02) Santo Domingo Jewelry Olivetta and Clamshell Heishi Necklace 29 1/2" long 20 Strands $480.00	Olivetta & Clam Shell Heishi Santo Domingo Necklace - Josephine Coriz Santo Domingo Jewelry Olivetta and Clam Shell Heishi Necklace 18" long 10 Strands $360.00	Coral & Heishi Santo Domingo Necklace - Josephine Cheykaychi (#01) Santo Domingo Jewelry Coral and Heishi Necklace 31" long $325.00

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When stone merchants come to the village, competition for turquoise and other materials is fierce. Using five-gallon cans for chairs, Santo Domingo women arrange themselves around tables piled with stones and shells to individually pick the raw materials they will shape into their jewelry.

Discoidal bead necklaces known as heishi require rough-cut stones which are first drilled, usually with electric drills and grinding machines, and then strung on a wire. Next the artist holds both ends of a wire strand and carefully draws the beads back and forth across a grinding wheel or other rough surface, shaping the heishi. The diameter of the beads can be very fine or more substantial. The artist then strings the beads on a softer cord such as cotton. Formed this way, good Santo Domingo heishi should feel uniform and smooth to the touch when running your fingers along the beads.

Mosaic inlay is still prevalent among several families at Santo Domingo Pueblo. Traditional backings - wood or shell - gave way to experimental materials such as phonograph records or car batteries in the early half of the twentieth century. Today shell is widely used as a backing. Santo Domingo artists my leave the shells in their natural form or trim them to a certain shape. As with other types of Puebloan mosaic inlay, the artist then creates a design or pattern on the backing with many varied-sized stones. Santo Domingo mosaic work tends to be more abstract in design than the geometric and pictorial mosaics of Zuni artists.

Artists who create Santo Domingo Jewelry:

Lita Atencio	Josephine Cheykaychi	Josephine Coriz	Raymond & Barbara Garcia
Andrew Lovato	Anthony Lovato	Ray Lovato	Roderick Tenorio
Roderick & Marilyn Tenorio

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