Larry Smith (Japan): Product Review
The famed Japanese jeweller pays homage to the Native American crafts of the South Western states of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah (known as the four corners region). Much of what we know about the indigenous people of this arid land comes from the genre of the Hollywood western – which is probably the most misleading source imaginable. Before the European settlers arrived the tribes of this area had no horses, very little metal work and lived from the land using stone tools – although there is evidence of farming maize in the southern Mississippi areas some distance to the east. The Spanish invaders bought horses and mined silver in Meso-America, two elements of European culture that the Navajo, in particular, adopted and mastered. It’s thought that silversmithing skills arrived from Mexico in the late 19th century and have been honed and improved-on ever since. It’s ironic that Japan has embraced this style of silverwork as some of the most significant pre-Columbian metalworking of North America happened with iron from the Pacific North West salvaged from Japanese boats wrecked and wasted-up on local shores, long before the white man arrived.
Photography: Masa Inoue
Larrysmith.jp
