Frances Begay

This Concert scarf is a little greener in real life, as is the pendant. I dyed the baby alpaca I used for it, adding green to what was a very light blue, and hoped it would match many a turquoise stone for her. I only wish I had handspun that particular yarn as well, but the lack of feeling in my fingertips makes spinning that fine a yarn a completely visual and very tiring task. Factory milled is still nice, soft stuff; I made the color my own.

I have for a long time aspired to own a piece of Frances Begay’s work. She is a gifted and well-known Navajo woman who creates jewelry the old way, selecting and then polishing her stones by hand, cutting and shaping her silver using 75-year-old traditional tools of the trade that others now pass on, nothing machined, nothing pre-cut. Turquoise and sterling from her hands is a work of finely-wrought art. As the daughter of an art dealer and as a handspinner, I appreciate the extra craftsmanship she puts into each piece.

I wrote to Frances and her husband a few times before I finally went ahead and bought this, and learned a few more details about how she goes about her work, letting her know how beautiful I thought it was.

Emerald Valley turquoise, greener than other pieces I owned (and then how it appears here), which I wanted. It’s large, and at 18 grams (I hesitate to say that; the sizes vary to match the stones), it’s quite hefty–my bluer turquoise pendant, for those who remember that post a good ways back, is 4 grams. Wearing Frances’s against my upper chest, it has a solid sense of presence, like the hug of a friend.

And this scarf is what I put in the mail in return, by way of thanking her, the price of the piece not reflecting at all how much I value what she made specifically for me after my order arrived. I like how the open zig zag areas of the scarf echo the shaping of the silver edging her stone, the more solid areas to the sides echoing the solid silver surrounding her circular coil. It seemed just the right pattern. Artist to artist. And now, friend to friend.