Circa 1920's Isleta Cross Necklace

Historic handmade Pueblo squash blossom necklace with Naja.

Sterling Silver with Smokey Bisbee Turquoise cabochons strung on leather cord.

Dated to between the 1920's ~ 1930’s.

Sterling silver with Bisbee turquoise.

This piece incorporates a squash blossom, developed by Navajo silversmiths in the late nineteenth century and carrying associations with fertility, abundance and protection rooted in the significance of the squash plant as one of the Three Sisters crops.

This piece includes a naja, one of the most enduring forms of protection jewellery in Navajo and Southwestern silversmithing, associated with the crescent moon and in some Dine traditions understood as the protective arms of a mother.

In Native American tradition the cross represents the four cardinal directions and four sacred mountains and, in some interpretations, celestial bodies, with the Christian cross absorbed through Spanish colonial contact in the sixteenth century.

Length 75cm.