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United States

05/23/2025

Santa Fe Diary

AJF's Trip to The City Different

By Nathalie Mornu

Art Jewelry Forum took 17 travelers to Santa Fe, in the high desert of New Mexico, May 12–15, 2025. The temperatures were mild, the downtown area lush and green, with blooms everywhere. Garlands of dark red dried chiles festooned the buildings and lampposts. It was fun to watch the travelers sweep into the various locations we visited, adorned in their superb brooches, necklaces, earrings, and bangles. In one museum lobby, I overheard a group of people talking. Who are all those well-dressed people? one asked the others. Did you see their jewelry?

AJF traveler David Dao wears Esteban Erosky, photo: Nathalie Mornu — AJF traveler David Dao wears a brooch by Esteban Erosky, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Below, click on the photos to learn about what they show.

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In Santa Fe, jewelry is everywhere … , photo: Nathalie Mornu

… beneath the portal of the Palace of the Governors, under the Native American Artisans Program … , photo: Nathalie Mornu

… in downtown shops …, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Day 1, Stop 1: Museum of International Folk Art. This is one of the few museums in the United States dedicated to folk art from around the globe. Its collection, numbering more than 160,000 examples of folk and traditional arts from all over the world, aims to expand the understanding of folk art and encourage dialogue about traditions, cultural identity, community, and aesthetics past, present, and future, photo: Nathalie Mornu

We got a special behind-the-scenes tour of the museum’s holdings, including a giant room full of rolls of textiles. Shown: AJF trip planner and traveler Bonnie Levine, photo: Nathalie Mornu

… and traditional dress, shown: AJF travelers (left) Linda Peshkin and (right) Edie Nadler), …, photo: Nathalie Mornu

… another room packed with furniture, carts, carvings, and more … , photo: Nathalie Mornu

… a storage area that held crafts from Mexico …, photo: Nathalie Mornu

… and a receiving room. Shown: the collector and AJF traveler Michael Rotenberg with art from Oaxaca, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Thank you to (left) curator Kate Macuen and (right) collections assistant Kellen Hope! Photo: Nathalie Mornu

Day 1, Stop 2: Jeweler Linda Threadgill’s studio The metalsmith’s practice includes jewelry, vessels, and sculpture. With botanical imagery as a reference, Threadgill’s work explores the architecture of nature and the aesthetic vocabulary of hybrid patterns and forms. Working with modified natural plant forms, she reflects the origins of ornamental designs and stylistic conventions evident in the reimagining of nature. Her husband, Jim Threadgill, fabricated the giant tools that adorn her studio, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Threadgill took us through the working process for the brooches she’s currently making. It starts with digital paintings …, photo: Nathalie Mornu

… printed, cut out, stacked, and embellished to make maquettes …, photo: Nathalie Mornu

… the best of which she makes into jewelry, photo: Nathalie Mornu

And then we shopped! Photo: Nathalie Mornu

Day 1, Stop 3: Visit to the home of ceramics collectors and partners Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio, pioneers in the field of ceramics. In 1981, they founded Garth Clark Gallery in New York, Los Angeles, and briefly London and Kansas City. Clark is the leading scholar and critic of modern and contemporary ceramics, with 90+ books and writings to his credit. He founded the Ceramic Arts Foundation in 1979 and directed it until 2005. He has earned many awards and honors. Ulysses Dietz, former curator at the Newark Museum—he collected art jewelry for the museum during his decades there—was also present. A lively conversation explored the challenges art jewelry has in crossing over from craft into the fine arts. Shown: (left) Garth Clark and (right) Mark Del Vecchio, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Art was everywhere in their home! We were free to wander through it to admire their personal collection of ceramics and photography, including a ginormous primate head watching over the cooking from a kitchen counter …, photo: Nathalie Mornu

… a postmodern hunt room consisting of ceramic “trophies” instead of taxidermy, and a blue room that included (shown) Calamityware, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Day 2, Stop 1: Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. The Wheelwright maintains a growing, world-renowned collection that documents Navajo art and culture from 1850 to the present, as well as changing exhibitions on traditional and contemporary Navajo and other Native American arts, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Today, jewelry represents 50% of the museum’s collection, with 700 pieces on display and 5,500 pieces in its archives. (Right) curator Henrietta Lidchi gave us an introduction to Native American jewelry in an area of museum storage, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Lidchi showed us examples of three traditions in Southwestern Indigenous work. Prior to contact with Europeans, the local people produced extensive lapidary work, including inlay and beadwork, done on shell or cottonwood substrate. The shell, coral, and other materials from far outside the area serve as proof of the robust trade networks that existed across the Americas. Here's a modern example from the gift shop, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Following contact with the Spanish, we see metal work, including techniques such as stamping, filigree, and casting in tufa. Work was primarily made from silver coinage. This example of a Navajo squash blossom necklace by Slender (a.k.a. Slim) Maker of Silver (that’s his Anglo name) was in the jewelry gallery, which Lidchi gave us a private tour of. Maker of Silver was among the very first Navajo silversmiths, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Much of the work we think of as Southwestern dates from about 1860 or later—after the American Civil War, with the building of the railroads and Western Expansion. Shown: AJF travelers (left) Edie Nadler and (center) Susan Lewin, (right) curator Henrietta Lidchi in the Wheelwright’s storage area, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Much of this work was fabricated for sale to tourists. Shown: AJF traveler Emily Gurtman in the Wheelwright’s storage area, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Lastly came a tradition of lapidary work mounted in silver. Shown: AJF travelers Susan Cummins and Maggie Erickson, photo: Nathalie Mornu

In the Wheelwright’s storage area, photo: Nathalie Mornu

We saw spectacular examples of silversmithing in the jewelry gallery, which Lidchi walked us through, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Our visit ended with shopping in the famous museum store, the Case Trading Post. Shown: the collector and AJF traveler Karen Rotenberg, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Next stop: The Santa Fe Railway Arts District, which features art galleries, museums, dining. and shopping. Trains still stop at the station, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Day 2, Stop 2: Lunch at form & concept gallery.There, we spent time with the makers Bob Ebendorf and Brian Fleetwood, photo: Nathalie Mornu

(Left) collector and AJF traveler Susan Lewin discusses Ebendorf’s work with (right) the artist, photo: Nathalie Mornu. For the past 25 years, Ebendorf has repurposed existing materials by devising ingenious uses for the discarded and discovering ways to make the used into the new. His conceptual approach to jewelry questions the nature of adornment itself and explores alternative materials and ideas about the preciousness of jewelry. He’s a co-founder and former president of the Society of North American Goldsmiths, and his art is represented in diverse collections, including the Met, the V&A, and the Yale University Art Gallery. He taught at East Carolina University (1998–2016), and now lives in Santa Fe.

Brian Fleetwood, a citizen of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, is a jeweler, educator, and curator based in Santa Fe. His work connects knowledge and the act of making, exploring the ways we can use making as an expression of knowing. His work explores scientific themes of biology, ecology, natural systems, and taxonomy. Brian holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and he currently teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Day 2, Stop 3: Pat Pruitt. The contemporary jewelry artist of Laguna, Chiricahua Apache, and Anglo descent joined us for dinner that evening. Beforehand, he showed us recent work and told us about the trajectory of his career, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Pruitt lives in the village of Paguate, in Laguna Pueblo, NM, but is currently attending IAIA. He describes his work as “simple, clean, and a bit edgy,” photo: Nathalie Mornu

He has repeatedly won all the most important Native American juried art competitions for his vessels and his jewelry, which often has an industrial aesthetic. His work is in many museum and personal collections in the US and Europe, photo: Nathalie Mornu

DAY 3, STOP 1: Patina Gallery. Since its founding in 1999, Patina has become a top destination for fine studio jewelry and art objects. Its gallerist, Allison Buchsbaum, represents more than 75 renowned global artists. Shown: AJF travelers (left) Maggie Erickson and (right) Linda Peshkin, photo: Nathalie Mornu

The back wall of Patina featured a special exhibition of spectacular Korean art jewelry, curated by Charon Kransen for NYC Jewelry Week. Here, Buchsbaum stands in front of it. She wears a necklace by the Italian artist Monica Cecchi, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Another necklace by Monica Cecchi on Patina’s salesfloor. Cecchi’s segmented pieces are often made from cookie tins, photo: Nathalie Mornu

DAY 3, STOP 3: Shiprock Santa Fe. For over 30 years, this gallery has presented a carefully curated collection of historic and contemporary Navajo artifacts and craft, including jewelry, by leading Native American artists. This month, it mounted a very special exhibition of work by bead artist, maker, and collector Ken Williams, one of today’s most innovative artists in this medium, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Williams met with us and talked about his work. He said that ideas can come from anyplace, photo: Nathalie Mornu

He gets his inspiration from critters, from cereal, from cheeseburgers, from casino carpet, from candy, photo: Nathalie Mornu

The show included important pieces loaned by his collectors from around the country, including jewelry, photo: Nathalie Mornu

DAY 3, STOP 2: Curator-led tour of The Stories We Carry, at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. This is the only US museum to exhibit, collect, and interpret the most progressive work of contemporary Native artists, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Guest curator and IAIA Assistant Professor Brian Fleetwood guided us through his exhibition of contemporary jewelry created by more than 100 Indigenous artists, photo: Nathalie Mornu

IAIA students, faculty, alumni, and artists-in-residence made many of the pieces in the exhibition, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Fleetwood gave fascinating background about the work in all of the cases. Among other things, he talked about Indian Chief Headdress, by Richard Glazar Dinay. This embellished hardhat serves as a tribute to the Skywalkers—the indigenous workers who fearlessly built skyscrapers. The hardhat also pokes fun at small-town cops who puff up when they get a little power, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Work by Brian Fleetwood. His work explores scientific themes of biology, ecology, natural systems, and taxonomy, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Two Native makers who have pieces in the exhibition, (left) Jerome Nakagawa and (right) Kenneth Johnson, came in to talk about their work to AJF’s travelers, photo: Nathalie Mornu

DAY 4: Millicent Rogers Museum, in Taos, NM. The museum is a testament to the legacy of Millicent Rogers (1902–1953), a designer, artist, humanitarian, and friend to people across cultures. An heiress to the Standard Oil fortune, it’s said she came to Taos in 1947 with a heart broken by Clark Gable and physically weakened by rheumatic fever as a child.

Curator Claire Pelaez Motsinger showed us pieces from the museum collection and described the evolution of Indigenous jewelry in the Southwest. Nearly every Pueblo has its own jewelry tradition. These were eventually influenced by contact with the Spanish, and then later by trade with Americans conducting Westward expansion, photo: Nathalie Mornu

This cuff celebrates corn as a central foodstuff in the area, photo: Nathalie Mornu

The original cowboys weren’t the white guys of Hollywood films. They were outsiders and they wore their wealth in the form of, among other things, spurs, bolos, and spectacular concho belts.

Rogers designed jewelry for herself and for big fashion houses such as Schiaparelli, even though she didn’t necessarily get credited. The pieces she collected influenced her own designs. (Shown) David Anderson produces the official replicas of her work which are sold in the museum gift shop. He can tell from examining works in the collection and from researching the archive that she had some knowledge of fabrication techniques and made some pieces, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Turquoise is associated with water, the heavens, and characters in creation myths. By the time Rogers got to New Mexico, many of the mines in the Southwest were either mined out or being closed for other reasons. This necklace, probably the best-known piece in the museum’s collection, belonged to Rogers and weighs about three pounds, photo: Nathalie Mornu

Author

Nathalie Mornu

Nathalie Mornu has edited nonfiction and DIY books since 2003; she is particularly passionate about titles specializing in jewelry and crafts. After studying jewelry fabrication and furniture-making for five years at the Appalachian Center for Craft, she changed course altogether and pursued a degree in journalism. Nathalie then spent a dozen years in the editorial department at Lark Books. In her tenure there, she worked with former Art Jewelry Forum editor Damian Skinner to copy edit Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective. Nathalie began serving as AJF’s proofreader in June 2014 and subsequently branched out to copy editing and content management for the organization.
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