Anthony Lovato Tufa Cast Pin Pendant of Corn Maiden With Turquoise

I chose Turquoise & Tufa's name because I'm so impressed with the exceptional silver (and sometimes turquoise) jewelry that comes from the traditional tufa casting technique. Anthony Lovato from Kewa Pueblo is one of the greatest jewelers to tufa cast silver. In fact, he received the 2023 Living Treasure Award from the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture here in Santa Fe.

He's known for his superb corn motif jewelry, and this beautiful pin/pendant of tufa cast silver merges that symbol of life with another that's a little more abstract. The elongated pin/pendant is a stylized figure, a type of corn maiden, with a turquoise head, and most wonderfully, a large pottery olla balanced on top of her head. 

If you lived long ago, you'd see this at New Mexico Pueblos - women carrying water on their heads using large pottery ollas. This is because they had no running water, and women would walk (sometimes long distances) to streams where they'd collect water to carry back to their village. Therefore, with this piece of jewelry, we're celebrating the life-giving corn, and more abstractly, life-giving water as carried in the olla. How fantastic!

Its strong design coupled with a large size will turn heads - the corn pin/pendant measures almost 4" long - 3 3/4" x 1 1/2". Signed by Anthony Lovato on the reverse.

If you'd like, I can ship her with a leather strap so you can immediately wear it both ways.

Watch this video if you'd like to see more of her.