On many occasions since her childhood in Arizona on the Navajo reservation, Shelly C. Lowe has reached for the silver and turquoise squash blossom necklace that belonged to her paternal grandmother, wearing it over a black shirt for maximum effect.
The Native American squash blossom necklace is a classic piece of jewelry in the American Southwest — and it’s the official state necklace of New Mexico. Its design has three basic components: fluted beads called squash blossoms because they resemble the plant’s blooms, a central crescent-shaped pendant called a naja and multiple round beads.
Dr. Lowe, 50, has worn her necklace to events at the White House and for official portraits, including one for her recent appointment as president of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. She previously was the chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities and has a doctorate in educational policy studies and practice.
President Barack Obama once complimented her on the piece, she recalled in a recent interview, and she told him that it gave her a way to carry her grandmother’s teachings. “It was like having her there with me,” Dr. Lowe said, “and representing who I am and my family while I was at the White House.” Her grandmother, Dorothy C. Lowe, died in 2002.
Squash blossom necklaces have a balanced composition, and they require great skill and artistry to execute, according to Henrietta Lidchi, the executive director of the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe and the author of “Surviving Desires: Making and Selling Native Jewellery in the American Southwest.”
“I think one of the impressive things about squash blossom necklaces, in addition to the aesthetics, is how much work they take to make,” Dr. Lidchi said during an interview at the museum, adding that the dimensions of each repeated element must be precise and in proportion.
The style was created in the late 19th century by Diné (Navajo) silversmiths, said Dr. Lidchi, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology and cultural studies. While some details point to Spanish influences — some scholars have linked the naja to bridle decorations and the squash blossom beads to clothing adornments shaped like pomegranates — they translated them into something new, she said.
An early example of the necklace in the Wheelwright’s extensive Southwestern jewelry collection was made by a silversmith known as Slender Maker of Silver between 1885 and 1890 for Henry Chee Dodge, a Diné tribal leader.
Other tribes and pueblos also adopted the form, and artists continue to riff on it today, Dr. Lidchi said. “Basically, you’re playing with people’s recognition and then you’re doing something else.”
Nanibaa Beck, 43, a Diné jewelry maker in Tucson, Ariz. whose business is called NotAbove (her favorite mispronunciation of her name), has reinterpreted squash blossom beads in some of her earrings and other pieces, although she said hers are rounder, more like the shape of pomegranates. “I’m just having fun with the form and having fun with the concept,” she said.
Ms. Beck made her first full squash blossom necklace in 2022 for the Field Museum in Chicago, for its permanent exhibition called “Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories.” She was working on it when her father, the silversmith Victor Beck Sr., died, so it became “a grieving piece,” she said.
In the naja, she incorporated details that paid homage to her parents (her mother, Eleanor Beck, died in 2016). It included rows of small inlaid stones — white shell, natural turquoise, abalone and the black gemstone jet — associated with the four sacred mountains of the Navajo Nation. The necklace also had 78 hand-fabricated silver beads, including 12 squash blossoms.
“It was a journey,” she said.
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