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Silver Flake News
Collecting Family Silver
by Stephanie C. Doster
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues02/mar02/object.html
The Smithsonian recognizes the distinctive jewelry
of three generations of southwestern silver smiths
Bent over a scarred wooden workbench laden
with shears, files and other tools of his trade, Sam Patania
snips sterling silver wire and sheet into tiny strips, ovals
and crescents. Wearing jeans, a button-down shirt and magnifying
glasses, Patania, 40, hammers the wire flat and solders the
pieces together to create two clusters of turquoise blossoms
with leafy silver stems—earrings designed 50 years ago
by his late grandfather, Frank Patania, Sr., and still in
demand today. At the other end of the narrow workshop, Sam’s
69-year-old father, Frank Jr.—or "Pancho,"
as he is better known—bends gold into a ring setting.
For more than 60 years, the Patania family—father,
son and grandson—has been creating remarkable designs
in silver, gold and platinum in their Tucson, Arizona, shop.
The Patanias, says Joanne Stuhr, curator of the Tucson Museum
of Art, "are absolute master craftsmen." Last year,
their work caught the eye of Kenneth R. Trapp, curator-in-charge
at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum,
who added three Patania bracelets—each reflecting a
distinct generational voice—to the 100-odd other items
in the gallery’s jewelry collection. Very simply, he
says, "they appealed to me."
In Frank’s circa 1950 floral spray design,
25 round turquoise blossoms rest on layers of veined silver
leaves and wavy silver stems that wrap around the wrist. Pancho’s
bold and virtually seamless asymmetrical bracelet was fashioned
about ten years later from six irregularly shaped pieces of
silver soldered together over a small superstructure. Sam’s
1999 bracelet—a clear green tourmaline wedged in 18-carat
white gold—reflects his determination to break away
from the types of pieces the older Patanias created. "The
bracelets represent three generations of this family,"
Trapp says. "They really do have a story to tell."
That story began in Sicily. Frank Patania,
son of a cobbler, was born in Messina in eastern Sicily in
1899. At 6, he began learning the fundamentals of jewelry
making as an apprentice to a local goldsmith—an arrangement
that ended abruptly one December day in 1908.
Early that morning, family lore has it, a specter
appeared at the foot of his mother’s bed, telling her
to gather her three children and take them outside. Moments
later, an earthquake shook the family’s house to the
ground. The Patanias were spared, but they set sail for New
York the following year.
As an immigrant son, Frank made tassels and
braided cord for a milliner and worked as a factory machinist
during World War I. After the war, he landed a job with Manhattan
jewelers Goldsmith & Stern, where he was groomed as a
designer, working with platinum ring mountings and cameos.
When Frank contracted tuberculosis at age 24,
his employers shipped him out to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to
convalesce. But the same scenic beauty, brilliant light and
ethnic allure that had attracted painter Georgia O’Keeffe
and novelist D. H. Lawrence to northern New Mexico also captivated
him. When his health rallied, he decided to stay, and in 1927
he borrowed money to open his own shop in the center of town.
Local Native Americans had been making silver
jewelry since the mid-19th century. Soon Frank began to combine
their heavy silver and stone materials with his own stylistic
approach. The native techniques "got his thinking away
from the very fine, precise platinum works Back East into
something bolder and more powerful," Pancho says.
Beginning in the 1930s, Frank and his new wife,
Aurora Masocco, befriended such well-known local painters
as Randall Davey and Lady Dorothy Brett, and later, actress
Greer Garson. With a welcoming sofa, fireplace and full coffeepot,
the shop became a frequent stop for Georgia O’Keeffe,
who was known to use the Patanias’ telephone and sit
and chat or stash her packages behind the counters while she
ran errands around town.
Business was brisk in Santa Fe during the busy
summer season, but Frank decided to expand the business to
a warmer winter climate and, in 1937, settled on a spot in
downtown Tucson. Shuttling back and forth between Tucson and
Santa Fe, Pancho and his two sisters grew up in the shops
alongside a team of Navajo, Hopi and Spanish-American apprentices.
Pancho recalls his father telling him to make dozens of tiny
silver beads, which were used as ornamentation on larger pieces;
each time Pancho finished a batch, his father would tell him
to make more. "It was tedious, but it was a blessing
in disguise," says Pancho. "Dad trained me as an
apprentice would be trained under a master."
Pancho joined the family business full-time
in 1956 at age 24; his father died of cancer in Tucson at
age 64 in 1964, and Pancho took over the shop. Drawing inspiration
from architecture and sculpture, he simplified, streamlined
and updated his father’s designs. Pancho still divides
his time between Tucson and Santa Fe, where he owns a shop
with his wife, Donna.
Ten years ago, Sam took over the Tucson studio
and showroom, which sit in an adobe building on a broad boulevard.
He learned the trade as a teenager working part-time in the
shop, and as a student in metalsmithing and gemology courses.
In one of those classes, he met his future wife, Monica Borquez.
It’s too soon to say if their two young children will
follow in the family’s footsteps.
Dazzled by the glorious colors he saw every
year with his father at the International Gem and Mineral
Show in Tucson, Sam began using precious metals and stones
in his work—a style that differentiated him from his
father and grandfather.
"I love working with expensive materials,"
he says. "I like the idea that there’s intrinsic
value in the pieces apart from my work." While he produces
jewelry that is distinctly his own, drawing inspiration from
haute couture and other sources, Sam’s designs also
are influenced by the work of the elder Patanias.
"Almost all of their classic pieces are
fashionable, up to date," Sam says, "and collectors
have the same passionate connection to their jewelry as I
do. They love it all."
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