Sentimental Jewelry

by Brigid McAlpin April 27, 2025

This past week was even busier than usual with either Zoom or telephone meetings every day. I was able to post four more cuff bracelets from the to-do list, including the dramatic piece above by Navajo silversmith Ronnie Willie. About 10 years ago when we visited Dallas for the Roller Derby World Cup, we visited Castle Gap, which is a beautiful Native American jewelry store. This was my first experience with Navajo Pearls and I also picked up a Ronnie Willie cross pendant.

Years before that Mother, Dad and I visited the fancy antique fair at Arlington Racecourse and there was a very cool couple with a booth selling Native American jewelry. Mother purchased this Ronnie Willie cross pendant and cuff from them. Both pieces feature Royston turquoise cabochons. The cuff is covered with adorable repousse work and the pendant is done in a "cross dot" design. There are other artists who make nice pieces in the cross dot style but in my opinion Ronnie Willie is the most expert. I now have custody of these pieces and although I am not a cuff wearer, I feel sentimental about them because these were some of the first pieces to start Mother's Native American jewelry collection. They really should go to a good home and not just sit in a drawer so I will be offering them for sale soon.

I also posted this dramatic vintage Navajo cuff bracelet which I estimate is from the 1980s as well as a plain cuff bracelet by celebrated Navajo artist Kirk Smith. His pieces are very rare and this is the first time I have seen a plain piece by him. It has a wonderful time-worn quality to it and would be great on its own or stacked.

I also reposted this Fred Harvey Era turquoise cuff bracelet. It came to me as shown in the top photo - the stone was badly broken but the Native belief is that a cracked stone means the piece protected the wearer from harm. I think this is a very powerful message so I did try to sell it as it was. There was a lot of interest but in the end no takers so I decided to have the stone replaced, as shown in the second photo. Hopefully it will now make its way to the right person. Sadly I did not sell any pieces online this past week so I need to work on changing that!

I made the most of the time I did not need to spend shipping packages and filled a medium size USPS flat rate jewelry box with pieces to ship home to the jewelry caravan. I was amazed at how many pieces fit in the box! I sent all of Mother's non-Native sterling silver jewelry as well as the fine silver pieces made especially for her by an artist friend. I also priced tons of rings and other items including an amazing grouping of sterling silver and CZ engagement-style rings. Some major bling is on its way to Mount Prospect!

It was Mother's job to make jewelry cards for me and she worked so hard to cut card stock into custom-size cards for each piece of jewelry. The jewelry caravan pieces were on black and she also ran with my idea to have a different color for each other type of jewelry I sell. She even embellished many of the cards with hand stamping and colored pencils. Mother really enjoyed doing piece work. A few years ago I tried to take the load off, especially with the caravan pieces and purchase two Cricut machines and some cute card patterns on Etsy. Things worked pretty well at first until they didn't! The card stock is applied to a sticky mat to run the printing pattern through the Cricut and all of a sudden the card stock would not stick and the pattern went haywire! I then tried a stickier mat and then I could not get the finished cards cleanly off the mat. When I purchased the Cricut machines I did not realize that I would have to keep buying new sticky mats all the time and they are not cheap. I tried Amazon sticky mat dupes but not surprisingly they were worse than the originals.

To make a long story short, I decided to investigate ordering pre-made jewelry cards as opposed to cutting them myself like Mother did. I looked on Etsy and they have folks who will print a logo and website information on the cards but for the caravan I just wanted plain cards. I ended up getting several different size cards on Amazon including basic rectangular cards for most everything, round cards for stud earrings and square cards for leverback earrings. They even had special cards for pins! I did not want the large holes at the top because I do not plan to hang the jewelry but could not find any cards without them. I was able to use the rectangular and round cards for some of the new pieces I shipped home. The rectangular cards are not quite as expected - they have a semi-matte finish which I hope will not scratch easily. I wish they were regular paper like the others.

I did order rectangular cards and pin cards in the kraft paper color for Native American jewelry but I will probably end up ordering some of the custom made cards on Etsy. One maker I have my eye on happens to live in Surprise, AZ which is not close to me but is still in the Phoenix area. She has tons of designs to choose from.

I also went as far as I could on the clothing project and after needing to postpone my Zoom meeting a couple of times so I could at least get the spreadsheet loaded with an inventory list, I was able to turn it over to the company on Friday. I have limited information on many of the pieces because I purchased them from an online boutique as opposed to direct from the manufacturer. I asked if they could see if they could look up the style numbers and see if they have any of my pieces already on file. Hopefully they do as this would reduce the investigative work I'd have to do later.

There has not been much time to eat out but we did go to Portillo's after dropping the jewelry off at the Phoenix post office Saturday night. They have kiosks now for ordering and oftentimes Kuochun orders the Maxwell St. Polish but I always wondered why it came on a poppyseed hot dog bun. Since we can now take our time and order for ourselves, I saw that he was able to substitute the hot dog bun for a French roll. This definitely makes more sense to me! Kuochun is not a big bread person but he liked the French roll more than the bun.

I need to do some research and find another late-night alternative than In-N-Out Burger and Portillo's. One thing about the Phoenix area is I have not found a 24/7 diner. Mel's Diner from the '70s TV show Alice (I loved that show as a kid!) is in Phoenix but they are only open until 2:00 PM and not nearby. One day we might try it just so I could say I did.

There is an old-fashioned soda shop and diner near downtown Phoenix named MacAlpine's, the name is so close to mine I am intrigued by it but we do have the Sugar Bowl which is only five minutes away in Old Town. They had been in business since 1929 but closed down due to the pandemic, but somehow with community support they were able to reopen recently.

Allergy season is in full swing here and the pollen is getting me good! Piles of pollen gather on the front steps, I think due to the neighbor's trees which are beautiful but some times of year also drop thousands of tiny leaves the size of a grain of rice. Also at this time of year, the girls pick up lots of burrs on their legs and beards during their walks. Margot allows me to carefully remove them but Vivi is not having it! Kuochun bought a slicker brush on Amazon which I think is really for dogs that shed but he uses it to at least get some of the burrs out of Vivi's beard. The bristles retract so it makes it easier to remove the burrs from the brush. I am allergic to the burrs too but I am powering through it all without medication!

Goals for next week are to try and post more jewelry online while still keeping up with our estate sale busy season. See you next time!