Herbert Begaye is a Navajo silversmith who works in 14K gold and sterling silver together, and he is one of the artists this store has followed longest. You will see his name spelled both Begay and Begaye on older tags and listings; Begaye is the spelling he uses.
His speciality is weight. The cuffs are heavy, wide and hand-forged, with 14K gold laid over sterling silver in bands, rope and applied shapes, and hand stamp work carried right around the piece, often continuing on the inside where only the wearer sees it. That inside stamping is a good tell for his bench: it is work nobody pays extra for, done anyway. Wrist by wrist the cuffs are shaped rather than bent, so they sit flat instead of gapping.
Beyond cuffs, this collection holds his link bracelets, rings and gold-with-silver pieces. The gold is solid 14K, not plate or fill, which is why his work sits at a higher price than the silver-only bracelets elsewhere in the store. Several pieces here pair the metal with natural turquoise. Where a piece is signed, its listing says so.
Begaye grew up in the Crownpoint and Prewitt area of New Mexico and studied at Fort Lewis College in Colorado, and his gold-on-silver bracelets are carried by museum shops and Southwest galleries well outside Arizona. If you want to compare his metalwork against the rest of what we carry, start with our bracelets or the full 14K gold collection. Everything here is one of a kind, and the heavy cuffs in particular are worth trying on in the Old Town Scottsdale showroom before choosing a width.