I am looking for help in identifying the maker of the overlay buckle in the attached photos. I could not find this hallmark in any of my references or online.
The mark looks like a conjoined “VP” made with a small straight line stamp.
The design and construction of the buckle seem to combine Hopi overlay techniques, with stamped background areas, together with the traditional puebloan icon of the horned serpent or avanyu. Could this suggest a Hopi/Kewa linkage?
The only Hopi craftsman with the initials “VP” that I could find is Veryl Pooyouma. He is full Hopi. I believe he uses a pictorial hallmark similar to the Hopicrafts mark.
I have looked high and low to find this mark and i have had no luck. It doesn’t make sense because the work is not from a beginner. So, I started searching Hopi jewelry with serpents and found a great piece in Margaret Wright’s Hopi Silver book on page 54, but that was accredited to Lawrence Saufkie. Then I went back to the hallmark and thought about that. Lots of hallmarks are one stamp, but this one looks like the artist puzzled it together using. Then I started looking through hallmarks on Indian Native American jewelry marks to see if anything was close. I came across the mark attributed to Phillip Sekakaptewa 2 that was similar and that it had that puzzled together look. I don’t know the history of Phillip’s hallmark, but the one thing that immediately threw me off was the name and the initials, they just don’t match. Next I googled Phillip Sekakaptewa and Google a serpent jewelry shows up. I don’t know where to go next, but it seems like you are going to have to do some creating a story. Good luck.
I am kind of new at this, but could this be a VA scratched in and the A never got completed? I have a jpg for Vidal Aragon that I found on American, and i do not seem to be able to upload it to this post so you can check it out on their site - I am may be wrong but it is a possibility from the scratch mark on your buckle.
New member here, sorry to dredge up an old thread, but I have another piece with these same initials. I bought it thinking, oh that’s easy! I’m sure I’ll find it in the Hopi Silver Wright book.
I did not
Just wondering if anybody has found out who this maker is since 2017 when this was first posted. I’m pretty sure it is 100% Hopi; I collect Hopi pieces in particular and have seen hundreds. It’s a great piece even if it’s unattributed!
Thanks!
Jeny
