Vintage Sleeping Beauty Turquoise Navajo Cluster Bracelet Cuff

Our Vintage Navajo Sleeping Beauty Turquoise Cluster Cuff Bracelet is a magnificent example of an earlier era  of Southwestern jewelry. Thirty-one hand-cut stones of Sleeping Beauty turquoise are arranged in concentric clusters across a broad silver cuff, each stone slightly different in shape, matrix, and tone. The silver retains its original patina, giving the piece the depth and character that only age can produce. Unsigned and clearly made by hand, its precise maker and date are unknown, but everything about it speaks to an older tradition of Navajo silversmithing in which the stone itself took center stage.

Sleeping Beauty turquoise, mined near Globe, Arizona, became prized for its luminous sky-blue color and relative purity. The mine ceased turquoise production in 2012, and material of this size and quality has become increasingly difficult to source. To find thirty-one substantial pieces together in a vintage cuff is exceptional. These are not the small calibrated stones commonly seen today, but generously cut pieces with real presence, each one shaped by hand and set into silver as part of a composition designed to command attention.

Cluster jewelry occupies an important place in Navajo adornment. By the early twentieth century, Navajo silversmiths were creating increasingly elaborate cuffs, necklaces, rings, and other forms in which multiple turquoise stones were arranged rhythmically across broad expanses of silver. The effect was both decorative and monumental. In a piece such as this, the repetition of turquoise creates its own visual language: bold, unmistakable, and deeply rooted in the great tradition of Southwestern jewelry.

For Jean Marie, this cuff carries another layer of meaning. She grew up in Arizona and as a child traveled through the Navajo Nation with her mother, Philomena. Those journeys left an indelible impression. She remembers the vastness of the landscape, the people they met, and especially the older Navajo women who wore substantial turquoise bracelets with extraordinary confidence and presence. It was there, long before Pax Philomena existed, that her fascination with Native American jewelry first took root.

Jean Marie discovered this cuff on her travels and was immediately drawn to its scale, its uncompromising use of turquoise, and the sense of history held within it. She chose to leave the patina untouched. To polish away that surface would have been to erase part of the character that makes the piece so compelling.

Entirely one of a kind, our Vintage Navajo Sleeping Beauty Turquoise Cluster Cuff Bracelet is a rare opportunity to acquire a piece of Southwestern jewelry history: an extraordinary gathering of Sleeping Beauty turquoise, hand-worked silver, and traditional Navajo design from an earlier generation. It is a statement piece in every sense, and one that would be extraordinarily difficult to recreate today.

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Dimensions 3" x 3.25"

Gap 1.25" Inner Circumference 5.25"

Will fit medium to large wrist

Made in USA