Bidspirit auction | Anthony Lovato Tufa Cast Sterling

Anthony Lovato Tufa Cast Sterling & Chrysoprase Cuff - Marked on the interior of the cuff.    Size: 6” Circumference w/ 1” Opening  Width: 1 1/2”  Total Weight: 120.2g   Condition: Tarnishing throughout. A minor mark to the stone. Please see images for details.    Artist Bio: Anthony Lovato is a fifth-generation jeweler from Kewa, or Santo Domingo Pueblo, and one of the masters of tufa casting. The method is old and unforgiving. The smith carves the design in reverse into soft tufa stone, pours molten silver into the mold, and the grain of the stone stays in the metal. Lovato learned it chiefly from his grandfather, Santiago Leo Coriz, who had picked it up from a Hopi friend, and he was raised to the bench by his mother, the jeweler and lapidary Mary Coriz Lovato. He also studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts under the sculptor Allan Houser. Born in 1958, he has made jewelry full time since 1984, working tufa he gathers on the Hopi Reservation. His designs draw on the petroglyphs he studies at ancestral sites, on the horses and buffalo of rock art, and on corn, central to Kewa life and to his own Corn Clan. He also casts canteens and large hollowware jars. In 2023 the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe named him a Living Treasure and mounted a retrospective of his work. This cuff pairs his tufa cast silver with chrysoprase.