Natural Lapis and Heishi Five Strand Necklace Santo Domingo

Our Lapis and Heishi Five Strand Santo Domingo Necklace is an exceptional, one-of-a-kind work of Kewa (Santo Domingo) Pueblo jewelry making, created by one of the most accomplished female artisans Jean Marie has had the privilege to know and patronize. Substantial in both presence and provenance, its five lavish strands weigh approximately 142 grams and are composed of Afghanistani lapis lazuli that has been in the artisan’s family for generations—a cache of vintage stone passed down to her by her grandmother. The rarity of the material and the individuality of the hand-shaped stones ensure that this necklace can never be precisely recreated.

Lapis lazuli carries a history as extraordinary as its color. Mined in the mountains of what is now Afghanistan for thousands of years, it traveled along some of the ancient world’s earliest trade routes and became a material associated with royalty, power, wisdom and protection. The stone was prized throughout the civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece and Rome. Alexander the Great’s campaigns into Central Asia brought the intensely blue stone of the region more fully into the Greek and Mediterranean world, where its remarkable color became increasingly coveted. For centuries afterward, lapis remained among the most precious blue materials known, eventually ground into ultramarine pigment so valuable that Renaissance painters reserved it for their most important passages.

Rather than seeking the mechanical perfection of commercially cut beads, the artisan deliberately shaped the lapis so that every stone would retain its own identity. Similar in scale yet individual in contour, no two are precisely alike. Some are softly rounded, others more angular or irregular, and together they create a remarkable expanse of saturated cobalt and royal blue. This subtle variation is intentional: the beauty lies in seeing the hand of the maker and the character of the stone rather than uniformity imposed by a machine.

Between the lapis beads are tiny pieces of traditional heishi shell, an exacting form of Pueblo lapidary work with deep roots at Santo Domingo. The pale shell provides the slightest interval between the intensely colored stones, allowing each piece of lapis to be seen individually while giving the five strands their rhythm and suppleness. At either end, approximately one and a half inches of finely worked heishi form an elegant transition from the abundance of lapis to the fastening, a beautifully considered detail that reveals the sophistication of the necklace’s construction.

Jean Marie personally selected this piece from an artisan whose work she loves to patronize and with whom she has developed a close relationship. She was immediately captivated by the extraordinary intensity of the blue and the abundance of five hand-strung strands. For Jean Marie, its beauty lies equally in what can and cannot be seen: the hours of patient labor, the individuality of the natural stone, and the hand of the woman who created it. The provenance of the material makes the piece rarer still—vintage lapis inherited from the artisan’s grandmother and transformed by her granddaughter’s hands into a necklace whose exact combination of stones and handwork belongs to this piece alone.

Sophisticated yet wonderfully organic, our Lapis and Heishi Five Strand Santo Domingo Necklace is a singular, one-of-a-kind work of wearable art, carrying the unmistakable character of its materials, its maker, and the enduring jewelry tradition of Santo Domingo Pueblo.

Number of strands: 5 

Made in New Mexico, USA.

Length 35" end to end