James McCabe is a Navajo silversmith, and among collectors he is the name most associated with Navajo coin jewelry. If you have seen a squash blossom necklace where every bead is a real silver dime, hammered and domed into shape, there is a good chance it came off his bench.
The coins are the point. McCabe works with vintage US silver, most often winged Liberty head dimes, also called Mercury dimes, struck between the 1910s and the 1940s. Each one is worked into a bead or a blossom by hand, which means a full-length necklace can carry a hundred or more individually formed coins and still hang evenly. The dates are readable on many of the pieces here. On the larger necklaces the Naja at the throat is sterling silver set with a single strong stone.
His stones are Southwestern and natural: Royston with its gold-and-blue matrix, Kingman, Sleeping Beauty, and red coral paired against the silver. Where a piece is signed and stamped, its own listing says so.
This collection runs wider than the squash blossoms alone. It takes in matching earrings, link and cuff bracelets, feather and blossom pendants, and full necklace-and-earring sets meant to be worn together. Prices span a considerable range, so the coin work is reachable at earring level as well as at heirloom level.
McCabe pieces sell steadily and are not reordered to a pattern, so the mix on this page changes. Browse the rest of our necklaces and bracelets, or come and handle the weight of a coin squash in the Old Town Scottsdale showroom, which is really the only way to judge one.