June 2007
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News From The Chief |
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Visit our NEW website, or the gallery, for our largest collection ever of antique and contemporary rugs, jewelry, beadwork and many other items! New collections and estates seem to be coming in daily, keep checking back for new items! We have so many new items right now we can't find room in the gallery for all of them!! |
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New Collections for the Summer|
Good question. And there are really two good answers. The contemporary arts that we show in the gallery are made, crafted, painted and carved by artists that we are privileged to know and work with. We buy directly from the artists who create the art. It is actually the exception to the rule if a customer is in the gallery for more than an hour and they don’t see a Navajo woman carrying in a weaving she’s just finished, or a silversmith or potter bringing in their work to sell. We have wonderful relationships with our artists and are proud to display their work.
What about the antique pieces? Actually, they seem to find us. Recently, we have been privileged to receive several outstanding collections from people who, for one reason or another, have decided that it is time to send their treasures on to the next people who will love them. We have some outstanding old pottery that came from a man and his wife who decided to move closer to their daughter and didn’t want to transport it. Wonderful jewelry, baskets and beadwork have come from the estate of a famous Santa Fe shop owner. Another one of our good friends was a dealer and collector who passed on last year and his son gave us one of the largest collections of Zuni and Navajo fetishes in the country to sell.
Some of the nicest pieces in the gallery were originally sold by Jackson Clark Sr, years ago, and their owners have returned them to the market. Sometimes, things come to us by unique routes. This beautiful early Crystal weaving was taken into a shop in Oregon that is owned by a Native Artist that had served on the Board of Directors of the Indian Arts and Crafts Association with gallery owner Jackson Clark. She didn’t know much about weavings, but she purchased it and sent it to Toh-Atin to sell. The weaving, pictured next to this article, is number C1150 on our web site. It came with a note from the owner that was really unique:
"My father, Charles William Spencer, and a classmate from the University of Kansas Law School, took stereopticon viewers and slides (double pictures) to sell in New Mexico and Southwest U.S. states. They sold all their stereopticon viewers and purchased Navajo rugs which they put in their buckboard and took back to Kansas to sell and pay for their expenses for the last year of law school. This was in 1902. My father practiced law at Sedan, Kansas. He died in 1947. He served as a state senator in Kansas and a regent on the Kansas Board of Regents (governing five Kansas colleges and universities). I am his daughter, also a KU Law graduate, I practiced with him for a while before I married and moved to California." Jeanne Spenser Fisk "P.S. This is one of those rugs my father brought back to Kansas in 1902."
We also picked up a wonderful collection of Kachina Dolls from a woman in Colorado Springs whose Grandfather had collected them in the 1920’s. Unfortunately, some of them were a little on the rough side having lived through children and grandchildren playing with them. Many of the also had feathers from birds that are now protected under the endangered species act.
We decided that the dolls were important enough to salvage. That’s when we got a little lucky. Terry Gasdia, a recent Fort Lewis College graduate in Museum Studies, is a Hopi-Pima artist that works with us in the Gallery. He is an experienced artist and teacher who creates beautiful marble sculpture and Kachina dolls.
He took the dolls to Hopi where, with his grandfather, a Hopi medicine man, they gave a proper burial to the sacred feathers. Then, using the traditional Cottonwood roots, Terry carved missing pieces for some of the dolls, painted them with traditional plant paints and replaced the feathers with ones that are legal. His restorations compliment the original dolls and preserve them for future generations. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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