Edison Yazzie is a Navajo artist who has spent more than three decades on one thing: inlay. What is here is a focused run of his leather bracelets, and they are an unusually wearable way to own serious inlay work.
The construction is the interesting part. Instead of setting the stonework into a heavy silver cuff, Yazzie mounts an inlaid silver panel onto a leather band. The result sits light and close on the wrist, adjusts to fit properly, and costs a fraction of what the same lapidary work would run in a full silver cuff. For anyone who finds traditional cuffs heavy, or who wants to wear stone every day, this is the answer.
He is best known for cobblestone inlay, and there is a cobblestone piece in this group. In cobblestone work the stones are not cut into a flat geometric pattern but set as rounded individual pieces packed tight together, each one domed slightly above its neighbours, so the surface has a texture you can feel. It is harder to execute cleanly than flat channel inlay, because every stone has to be levelled on its own.
The palettes run right across the collection: single-stone turquoise, deep blue lapis, warm earth tones, and multi-colour combinations that bring in spiny oyster and shell against the blue. Every stone is natural.
These are among the most approachable prices on any of our artist pages, which makes them a good first piece by a named Navajo inlay artist. Browse more bracelets, or see them on the wrist at our Old Town Scottsdale showroom.