Honest and Dishonest Wear

 One of the important characteristics of any piece of antique Southwest Indian silverwork is what we call "wear", which refers to the way that the silver is worn down over time by contact with something else, either skin or another piece of jewelry.  Wear gives old pieces their distinctive look and feel, and is something that can give inexperienced collectors a lot of trouble.  It can be difficult to tell if the wear is "honest", coming from simple use over a long period of time, or "dishonest", done artificially to deceive?  Some of it is just a feeling you get about a piece after having handled thousands of them over decades, a feeling that a piece just isn't "right".  But there are certain things to look for, and a good way to demonstrate what they are is to look at a piece that is "wrong".

Turkey Mountain Traders purchased the bracelet below in 1998, and it has never been offered for sale.  We kept it on hand to demonstrate to interested collectors what a piece should not look like, and how to tell the difference between "honest" wear and the other, man-made kind.

A nice looking bracelet, definitely.  Plate on band bracelets like this one are highly prized by collectors.  If this piece was "right", it would definitely sell for a good bit of money.  So, what is the problem?

First of all, if you look at the plate, you can see that it was set over the stampwork, which means that it is a later addition.  This in itself is not a huge problem, because there are many older silver bands that had plates added to them many years ago.  The plate and bezel look to be of the 1915-20 era by technique, so that alone is not enough to discredit the piece, but it does mean you should look more closely at it.

Second is the quality of the chisel work on the plate.  It is more uneven than you would expect from a piece of otherwise high quality.  Smiths from the 1910s were quite skilled in this kind of detail, and it is unlikely that such sloppy work would have been allowed to leave the forge.  Again, though, this is not enough to call the piece "wrong".  For that, you have to look more closely:

Sometimes, to simulate wear, a more modern smith will strike lightly when stamping a piece, which is what looks like happened here.  But if you go a bit further down the band, there is something even more odd:

I have taken as close a picture as I possibly could, but if I could take a picture while looking through a 10-power loupe, you would see that what looks like wear here is actually manipulated, probably with a file.  True "honest" wear would be what you get when your finger and thumb grab the end of the bracelet to take it off and put it back on.  What looks like that kind of wear here is actually just a light stamp on the end, which was then filed down.

Another strike against this piece is the evenness of the wear throughout the bracelet.  "Honest" wear occurs in certain places where a bracelet touches other bracelets, or where the owner touches it to take it off and put it on.  That touching does not occur evenly all over the bracelet, such as we see here.  One area on the side or the end, or both, should be worn down more than other parts of the piece.  Even wear like this can only be done through purposeful manipulation, usually in an effort to deceive. 

With a 10-power loupe, you can see that the stamping has actually been painted with some kind of darkening pigment to simulate patina, another red flag.

As a final problem with this bracelet, there are no annealing delaminations on the inside, which is entirely smooth.  Not all old pieces have delaminations, but it is somewhat unusual to see one without.

Put it all together, and the piece just "feels" wrong.  And after 30 years of looking at these magnificent pieces of art, we've learned to trust our feelings.

If you have any comments or questions, please drop us an email or call us at (480) 423-8777.