Loloma things and Loloma rings

No other American Indian artist has ever reached the heights of popularity achieved by Charles Loloma (1921-1991), the Hopi jeweler, potter and painter whose work, especially his jewelry, has become synonymous with creativity and quality. He took American Indian jewelry to places it had never been, with his designs, his materials and, honestly, his marketing. He was the first public superstar of Indian art, and time has hardly dimmed his reknown; his pieces are just as collectible today as they were when he was alive.

One of the wonderful things about his work is that there is no "typical" Loloma piece. There are designs he made multiple times, such as his "height" and "kachina" bracelets, but there are many other pieces that do not follow those designs at all. A "typical" Loloma piece is a piece done with top-quality materials, expert technique and very pleasing design, no matter the form. And we now have three rings that show some of the stages of his development as an artist, each markedly different from the others but all identifiable as his work by the quality and creativity involved. (Anything said to be "in the book" comes from Marti Struever's comprehensive and highly recommended 2005 book LOLOMA.)

The first ring is the earliest of the three, made during a somewhat experimental time when Loloma was becoming comfortable with the use of lost-wax casting in gold, right around 1968-70. He did this "branch" design with both cultured and freshwater pearls, in both silver and gold, though this is the most elaborate gold example of this type we have seen.

Though he did not continue to produce this type of ring in any quantity, the lessons he learned from doing such an elaborate lost-wax casting stayed with him for the rest of his career. In fact, a ring made in 1985 (book, page 169) is not at all dissimilar, though the gold casting is simpler.

By the mid-1970s, Loloma had clearly made a conscious decision to only use the best materials available. Not to say that his early pieces were trash, but around this time the quality of his turquoise goes up markedly. Here is a marvelous example of that, a tufa-cast silver ring with a gold bezel and a wonderful piece of high-quality Bisbee turquoise. It is likely to have been made between 1975 and 1980, probably more towards the earlier date.

One fascinating thing about this ring is the reinforced silver area at the back of the shank. Loloma was very well known for creating specific pieces for specific people, which means that they sometimes would only fit the person for whom they were made. In this case, he actually put an extra piece of silver on the tufa-cast shank, so that the ring could be sized at a future time without destroying the texture of the band. Later pieces with more inlay were tougher to size, as we shall see....

And HERE is an unsizeable one, done in 18k gold with fantastic inlay that goes a large part of the way around the shank. This ring is one of the last things Loloma made, and was done in collaboration with his nieces Sherian and Verma. It was purchased from him at Third Mesa in 1986, just before the September 1986 accident that left him unable to create at his previous levels.

Note the height inlay in this ring, more commonly seen on his bracelets. In this little masterpiece, he and his nieces worked to make a miniature version of one of his gold bracelets, with the stones reaching different levels. It is very well engineered, and fits beautifully if your finger is that size (7, to be exact.)

From the experimental to the unmistakable, these three rings together tell a good part of the Loloma story. To see complete information on each ring, go to the RINGS section of the website or call us for more details.