INDIAN MARKET - SANTA FE - 2024 - Part 4

INDIAN MARKET – SANTA FE 2024 – Part 4

NAMBE

by W H INMON

Today is the Friday before the Market. The streets are being lined with tents. Vendors are already starting to display their wares. But the big show comes tomorrow. The preparation that is being done reminds me of a salmon run in Alaska. Just prior to the salmon run, the banks of the streams are lined with bear and eagle. The bear and eagle know what is coming. The difference is that the salmon run doesn’t exactly happen on a preselected date. But the market does happen on a predetermined date.

The vendors and the merchants are waiting like the eagles and the bears.

I need the exercise so I set off from the La Fonda and start walking around town.

Just a block away I encounter one of my favorite places – the Nambe shop.

The Nambe story is an interesting one. Each of the pueblos has some tradition or product that they are famous for – pottery, jewelry, food, etc. Nambe is famous for its kitchenware. Nambe produces the most amazing kitchen bowls, silverware, plates, etc. Nambe ware is ultramodern. If you were in New York looking at a selection of Nambe ware for sale you would NEVER guess that it came from a New Mexico Pueblo. It is the sort of stuff that a Hollywood movie star would use in serving an upscale party. One imagines stars, producers, directors at a dinner table all eating off of Nambe ware.

The story that I heard was that a while back someone at Nambe discovered or perfected a metal fabrication process. This process produced a metal of great strength and was finished with a very shiny resolution. The designers at Nambe shaped this metal into ultra modernistic shapes. Nambe ware is very modern and very beautiful. (And expensive.) Nambe ware is definitely upscale.

Unlike the output from every other pueblo, Nambe ware has no hint that it comes from Native Americans.

I love Nambe ware but my wife does not. So I don’t buy any. But I look and admire.

A few doors away from the Nambe shop is a Santa Fe furniture shop. The furniture shop has furniture, each of which is a one of a kind. The carpenter takes wood in its natural state and turns it into a table, a chair, a stool, etc. The natural shape of the wood is preserved in the making of the furniture. The more gnarly the wood, the better.

After the furniture is shaped, the carpenter does a finishing touch. Either using small cracks in the wood or creating an intentional blemish in the wood, the carpenter glues in turquoise. Then a finish is supplied to the object. The net result is a look that intimates that the wooden object had a deposit of turquoise in it. It is quite beautiful and quite distinctive.

But my wife does not like the style so I don’t buy anything.

I wander by the art galleries on Palace Street. They are having an artist’s reception at the Manitou. One of the artists they are celebrating is Mateo Romero, from one of the local pueblos – Pojaque. I happen to really like Mateo’s art. The chance to meet him and shake his hand is something I can’t resist. He is a younger person than I would have imagined. But very nice and very engaging. A graduate of Dartmouth.

I had the honor of going to school with the son of a famous Indian artist – Woody Crumbo. I asked Mateo if he had heard of Woody. He had.

And I really do like Mateo’s art.

I had seen several of Mateo’s paintings that I really liked. But I didn’t see them on display. I asked him where they were. He told me that he had sold 4 of his paintings in the first thirty minutes of the reception.

Now I call that a marketplace.

So I made it through the day with great financial discipline. I did not buy a thing other than food and drink.

And that is making a statement in Indian Market.

?

Bill Inmon lives in Denver with his wife and his two Scotty dogs – Jeb and Lena. Jeb and Lena are at the dog sitters home right now. We miss Jeb and Lena. But they are probably socializing with the other dogs and are having a cookie right now. We are out of sight, out of mind.