Ambrose Tsosie is a Navajo artist, and this collection is a tight run of one thing done well: Night Sky link bracelets.
A Night Sky bracelet is a scene rather than a pattern. The ground is dark stone, and set into it are stars, moons and streaking comets, so the finished band reads as a strip of desert sky at night. The stars are cut from opal, which is the detail that makes these pieces work: opal fires differently depending on how the light hits it, so as your wrist turns the sky changes colour. Blues go to green, whites flash pink and orange, and the piece never looks quite the same twice.
These are built as link bracelets rather than solid cuffs. Each panel is inlaid separately and then hinged to the next, which means the bracelet articulates and lies against the wrist instead of standing off it. It is more work than a single-panel cuff and it wears far more comfortably. One piece in this group is reversible, carrying finished inlay on both faces, so it is effectively two bracelets.
The inlay itself is fine-grain channel work in sterling silver: many small stones cut to shape, fitted edge to edge, levelled and polished flat so the surface is continuous. There is also a circle link bracelet here that works the same technique in a rounder, softer geometry.
Night Sky work has a following of its own, and Tsosie is one of a small number of Navajo inlay artists producing it at this standard. Every piece is one of a kind. See more bracelets, compare with the Night Sky work of Clayton Tom, or come and turn one under the lights in our Old Town Scottsdale showroom.