Vern Mansfield, Jr. is one of many family memebers well-known for making classic Hopi overly jewelry (see his bio information in our Artists section).

This piece features a long panel of Kokopelli figures marching from right to left while playing their flutes. This is very clean work in a long, flat oval shape (see note below). We acquired this bracelet in 1999 just before closing our store in the French Quarter in New Orleans. It's been sealed up tight in a ziploc since the end of December 1999. It lived through Katrina and was rescued in October 2005. It then went into hiding in our "Gone Missing" Collection, only to resurface when we moved our operation in February 2009.

Note on shape: All wrists are shaped somwhat differently, but this bracelet is shaped to fit a wide flat wrist. If you have this shape wrist, you have difficulty finding bracelets which fit you and you know what we mean when we describe this shape. If you do not have such a wrist, this won't fit you.

Hallmarked with Vern's pictographic stamp of one quadrant of a spiderweb.

Uniform width of cuff: 1/2"

Terminal to terminal: 5 3/4"

Gap: 1 3/8"

Total inside circumference (including gap): 7 1/8"

**Important Note** Silver polish is the enemy of Hopi jewelry. It will get into the grooves of the textured layer and be hard to remove (you can use a toothbrush under running water to get it out). Also, don't use a cloth impregnated with jeweler's rouge to polish it. In most cases, the best polishing rag is a 100% cotton t-shirt that has been softened by repeated washing. After all, you only want to polish the top layer.

Hopi overlay jewelry consists of two layers of silverwork. The overlayer consists of a separate layer of sheet silver which has cut out designs made with a jeweler's jigsaw. The designs may be geometric, figurative or realistic. These designs almost always incorporate themes or symbols of Hopi religion since the Hopi perceive no separation in their lives between the secular and the religious. The underlayer of Hopi silverwork consists of a layer which is carefully hammered to create texture for that part of the design which will show through the top layer of "cut out" design. After creating this texture on the underlayer, it is oxidized to make it dark grey to black in color. Then the two layers are soldered together to create the full effect of a precisely cut out design brought to life by the dark textured underlayer. Precision of the "cut out" of the overlayer and intricacy of the texturing of the underlayer are the main criteria for judging the quality of the piece. Some Hopi jewelry is finished with a brushed surface and some is buffed to a high polish.