A sterling silver hand-made cuff featuring a number of Native American iconography and symbols. This is a fabulous example of Pueblo tribe jewellery of New Mexico. Both the Pueblo and Navajo tribes of the American Southwest have a long history of making jewelry, with the earliest examples dating back thousands of years. Their jewelry is often made from materials like turquoise, shell, bone, and carved wood, and is infused with cultural symbolism and meaning. This cuff features two dancers in full traditional clothing laying on their backs mirroring each other on each side with a double headed reptile in the center. This could be the mythological creatures; the sisiutls. It is typically depicted as a double-headed serpent with fish qualities, sometimes with an additional central face of a supernatural being. The sisiutl features prominently in Native art, dances and songs. The sisiutl is closely associated with shamans because both are seen as mediators between the natural and supernatural worlds. The word for "sisiutl" in Tsimshian is Laqaqua'sa, which literally means "both sides head". As a transformative creature of vast shamanic power, the sisiutl could travel in and across all boundaries (worlds): land, water, & air. There is a belief among the Coast Salish that Sisiutl employ orca for transportationAround all of the edges to the cuff are a series of Native American symbols. Some of which are decorative, others hold meanings in their culture such as the suns on each end for happiness. This level and attention to detail can only be explained by an artist who took a huge amount of pride in their work. The piece likely dates from the latter part of the 20th Century, it is not signed.
