Eldrick and Charlotte Seoutewa
Eldrick Seoutewa talking about learning to make jewelry from his parents: The way that I learned was from my parents, cause you want to see what your
parents are doing, they kind of helped me along. I learned how to do the
traditional style of inlay from my mom, my mom used to do that, she was
one of the traditional types, when I was 8 or 9 I would watch her and sit
by her work table I got interested in trying to figure out what she was
doing so she taught me how to do it. And also we would help her set her
stones after she would grind it with the finger and then she would put
them individually like what you see on the earrings and afterwards we would
take it all out and fill it with that aluminum patch put the stones in
where they fit and then we let it dry. And she would do the finish. We
would sand it with the emery cloth. Then we would use a catalogue and buff
it with the soft edge of the catalogue to polish it. She would finish her
stuff and she would go sell it.
Eventually we were able to get some other equipment to where we could do the
lapidary, then we could use the harder stone.Charlotte Seoutewa talking about learning to make jewelry:
When I was babysitting for my uncle I had to grind the stones on the stick and I kept dropping them so I to told my uncle I’m getting tired of putting stones on the stick cause every time I try to grind them they will fall off and then he told me you should try this,
this
is more easy, and then he showed me how to grind it holding it with your fingernails
and fit it to a piece of jewelry. That’s how he taught me how to do that.
Like for instance a pendant like this [petition] each stone is ground to fit
exactly in the space using a grinding wheel and my fingers. We cut the stone
a little bigger and then we shape them, holding them with our fingernails,
sometimes I grind my fingernails instead of the stone. So we just shape them
up and fit them in there. That’s how my uncle taught me how and that’s
when I let go of using the old way because it was easier to use my fingers
than putting them on the stick.
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Eldrick and Charoltte Seoutewa, Native American Zuni Artists
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