A natural oval turquoise and sterling silver ring. This is quite an interesting looking ring made by a character that is just as interesting. The ring is made by American artist; Kevin Yazzie. Yazzie was late to the jewellery making business, and only began after an interaction with master silversmith Aaron Anderson:
“One day Aaron Anderson was in the store (Walgreens) and I was helping him. He was picking up pictures from a trip to Japan and I was full of questions. He told me to stop by his shop and see if I liked jewelry making. I knew who he was but didn’t know him. So, I started hanging out at his studio. I watched everything to see how he did it. Before going to Aaron’s shop I didn’t know anything about jewelry making. He gave me some tufa stone and told me to start carving.”
“I broke my hand soon after making those first pieces and had to have surgery. During this time I would spend all of my free time at Aaron’s study just absorbing everything he did. I broke my right hand and I am right handed. I started carving a piece with my left hand and it was my first really complete piece. Aaron was amazed I did that with my left hand.”
“I stayed at Walgreens for awhile, but I started to get lots of orders for my jewelry and just couldn’t keep up. I wanted to do art and so I left Walgreens to concentrate on jewelry. I am going to apply for the Heard and Santa Fe Indian Market and hopefully get in. Creating jewelry is really rewarding and I want to keep doing this.”
The stone is an American mined piece of turquoise with interesting deposits and deep black matrices running through, which create this unique 'fingerprint' to the stone. It is a natural rare gem grade Hubei Turquoise stone, the stone is a blue color, with a beautiful black webbed matrix, the stone sits in a smooth bezel, and is wrapped with twisted square wire at the base. This all sits upon this unique looking shank adorned with a series of stars all cast in the tufa method giving the ring this unqiue and beautiful look.
Tufa casting is a metalworking technique in which molten silver is poured into a single-use tufa stone mold, resulting in a unique, one-of-a-kind piece as the silver hardens into the mold's shape
The ring is both marked 'Sterling' and 'K' for Kevin Yazzie, and is a ring size 7.5.
