Featured Native American Piece?

Hi all,

I'd love to know a bit about this piece I picked up recently. I believe it's Native American. Pretty sure it's not silver.

Thanks!

 

I'd look a little further east.

Debora

 

Okeedokie! I'll wait and see if anyone else comes along and comments rather than take any more shots in the dark on this one.

 

That deep blue lapis is not typically part of the NA repertoire.

 

@Any Jewelry

not NA.....and I'd bet on silver.......
nice work and nice stones.......even looks to have age !

 

A $7 thrift find! I thought there was something special about it.

 

It’s Asian. @Any Jewelry will id it. Middle East guessing, Tibet, Nepal, Stans…

 

It is a modernized Tibetan style. Most of these are made in Nepal, and rarely genuine silver. A seller's favourite term for the metal is 'Tibetan silver', which is silvertone base metal.
If yours is silver, you are lucky, so I'd say, test it.

Whatever the metal, it is pretty, has countless siblings, but still a bargain at $7. I think the usual price for a base metal one is between $20 and $25.
Silver ones are considerably more of course.

 

As usual, you are spot on, AJ. It's not silver. My magnet clings strongly to the small metal beadwork. Thanks to you and to all who commented. I can put this one to rest now.


.

 

Still attractive ethnic costume!

 

the main body...or loose beads?

 

Okay I guess I got ahead of myself before, and there's still more to investigate about this piece in this thread. Went back and checked again. There is no magnetism around the main body or sections where stones are. See pics--I illustrated magnetic areas with the nail. Perhaps silver is tooled in the main body and around the stones after all. Or maybe just another alloy that isn't magnetic. The back of the body looks a little like nickel to me. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would think if the body were pure silver, or even silver-coated, the neodymium magnet would slide down slowly due to diamagnetism--like it does on my Morgans.

 

Any idea what the blue, green (the ovular stones that look light blue due to my cell phone camera), and rust-colored stones are? I'll be back shortly with some closeup pics under an industrial lamp I have.

 

Some wild colors with 10x mag and under the bright light. Almost looks like gold in there (don't I wish!).

 

Note the back of the body--looks like a worn down stamp toward the bottom left of the first pic.

 

Lat ones . . .

 

The greenish stones are turquoise chips set in a crushed turquoise-resin mix.
The rust coloured stones are either carnelian in a crushed carnelian-resin mix, or carnelian glass in a matching resin mix.
The blue is lapis lazuli chips set in a crushed lapis lazuli-resin mix. Lapis lazuli often has pyrite inclusions, which look like gold.

 

I guess I have to backtrack on my earlier comments......

 

You hadn't seen the close up pics yet. So all is forgiven, at least by me. I can't speak for dude though.

 

No hard feelings or spot on his impeccable IDing skills in my book.