Zuni Silversmith Dan Simplicio Sr.: Challenging Tradition

By Ernie Bulow

More than forty years after his death, Dan Simplicio’s designs are familiar, but they were boldly innovative in his day and changed the aesthetics of Indian jewelry forever.  His bold execution is still strikingly visual half a century later.

Dan Simplicio Sr. with casting

Simplicio came of age in an era when there were many innovators.  Zuni jewelry was still feeling its way, and creative juices were flowing.  Leekya Deyuse was experimenting with setting carved stone in silver jewelry; Leo Poblano was creating fine mosaic inlay; Bryant Waatsa was popularizing a style of needlepoint that would become “Zuni Jewelry” to the outside world; and Juan De Dios was perfecting technique for his generation.

Juan (whose name was spelled a variety of way including Didios) taught a whole generation of silversmiths.  At the time, limited tools were available and Juan is remembered for sending kids around the village to pick up charcoal.  In the traditional bread ovens oxygen is limited so good charcoal is produced in the fire.

De Dios heated his charcoal to a high temperature with the use of bellows and all of his silverwork was done with this awkward heat source and melted coins.  Juan was paraplegic and his students created a studio atmosphere where everyone shared ideas.

The De Dios style involves silver-mounted stones cantilevered out from the bracelet base, which gives his work a very distinctive look and makes the turquoise the leading element.  De Dios apprenticed his nephew Dan along with others who would become famous jewelers of the period.

Dan Simplicio began silversmithing with primitive techniques and limited tools, factors his son thinks contributed to his creativity.  “He made his own plate, drew his own wire, everything was done by hand,” says Dan Jr. who is also a metalworker and fine fetish carver.

Simplicio carved and tempered his own stamps from scrap steel.  There were swaging troughs cut into his hand-made anvil to make triangle and half-round wire.  One of his leaf stamps became almost a signature element of his work.  He said later he got the idea for the distinctive leaf from his time in Europe during the war.  He was fascinated by the Roman laurel leaf wreaths given to heroes of battles.

To make wire he beat a lump of silver into a thick pencil – annealed it to make it soft, and then drew it through a steel plate with a series of graduated holes.  The silver had to be softened again for each step of the drawing process.  Every piece he created was the result of many, many hours of labor.

Classic Dan Simplicio silver work, courtesy Perry Null Trading.

C. G. Wallace, the controversial trader from Zuni, encouraged originality and brought cash money into the pueblo.  He is said to be the first importer of coral and by 1936 was bringing it to Zuni in large quantities.  Though most stone workers in the village cut the material up and used it in inlay, Simplicio came up with the idea of mounting the oxblood coral in silver housing, maintaining its original branching look.

Then Dan combined the red with quality nuggets and his distinctive silver leaves.  The result was pure Dan Simplicio and is still easily recognized.  Other Zunis like Robert Leekya and Chester Mahooty were influenced by this technique.  Leekya is still known for his large nugget sets.

Dan learned the art from Juan and he, in turn, taught the next generation of metalsmiths including Juan and Jose Calavaza.  Dan’s sister Ruth Calavaza became famous and his brothers Mike and Chauncy were notable jewelers.  Their children, in turn, swelled the number of artists.

Simplicio is best known for these free-form pieces, but he worked in pretty much every technique of his day.  He was an influential tufa caster and some of his best jewelry had a cast base.  Though he mined his own tufa – a fine-grained volcanic ash stone – near the village of Zuni, he would put more than one design on a block, or carve both sides.

“He had a mine on the north edge of the reservation,” says his son.  “It was small and it was destroyed when they built the new road up the hill.”  There are several places south of Gallup where good tufa is found.

Though casting heavy silver is considered a Navajo thing, Simplicio’s work was distinctively Zuni for the most part.  Many of his existing molds show variations of a lacy flower design found on pottery.  He also used some prehistoric forms taken from rock art.  Dan Jr. has a charming piece that is either a frog or horny toad.

Like many Native Americans of his generation, Simplicio had at least two birthdays of record:  Aug 10, 1911, or maybe 1917.  His father was known as Old Man Simplicio and Dan doesn’t know his grandmother’s name.  Daniel’s sister, Ruth Calavaza was photographed by Burton Frasher and one of her iconic images, distributed as photo postcards, shows her working on jewelry.  Another shows her in traditional costume, taking bread from an outdoor oven.

Dan Simplicio in World War II

When Dan enlisted in World War II, he was inducted with a lot of Gallup men, including a number of Slavs.  They bonded in the service and he wrote letters home for the men who were not literate in English.  He won a bronze star with oak cluster for rescuing a number of fellow soldiers under heavy fire, dragging them back to safety one at a time.

Eventually he suffered a terrific wound to his thigh.  The Germans were experimenting with metal-clad wooden bullets.  It might have been a lead-saving move, but there was also the element of fragmentation.  The wooden bullets splintered on impact, creating a messy, dirty wound – an early form of biological warfare.

Daniel sat alone in a foxhole for three days with nothing to eat or drink.  Though it started to rain, the water he was lying in was too muddy and contaminated with his blood for him to drink.  He said later he just kept reciting Hail Marys and Our Fathers. Dan was pretty well out of blood when he was finally picked up.

After his return home he spent months in rehabilitation, some of it in Bruns General, the Army hospital in Santa Fe.  Octavia Fellin was running the library at the hospital and paid special attention to the Gallup boys.  It was there she met Daniel Simplicio.

She recalls that in 1945 they had a thousand patients there, mostly from the Southwest.  When they closed down the facility she was supposed to move to another hospital in San Francisco, but she made a visit to her folks in Gallup and never left town again.

Octavia Fellin's bead necklace

“A couple of years later a man came walking into the library,” she recalls.  “He asked me if I remembered him.  It was Dan and I asked him what he was doing.”  Dan told Octavia he was working as a silversmith and she asked him to make her a necklace.  “I told him to keep it simple,” she said.  “Some time later he brought in this necklace of silver beads.”

That was 1950 and Ms. Fellin still has the beads.  “I never wear anything else,” she told me.  “I love it so much.”  For years Dan created collectors’ items for C. G. Wallace in Zuni.  Eventually he went to work for John Kennedy in Gallup.  Dan Jr. says he found a pay stub from that period.  “My dad was making $1.50 an hour.”

Simplicio was a house silversmith for Kennedy for years, along with several Navajos.  Mary Morgan was just one smith who copied his style.  It seems that the influence went both ways.  He used the silver snake motif in his jewelry at that time and it is still seen in the work of Effie Calavaza.  The Navajo smiths were spooked by the use of rattlesnakes in jewelry.

Simplicio built himself a stone house in Zuni.  “Away from the restrictions of living with the wife’s family, many Zunis found the freedom seductive,” says his son.  The Simplicio house became a party zone.  Dan Jr. believes the switch to the Anglo type of family unit contributed to alcohol use among the Zuni and other Southwestern tribes.  The war had also been a large factor.

Weirdly, the leg kept bothering Dan, reinfecting often.  “I remember seeing him lance the wound himself.  I was just a kid and it was terrible,”   recalls his son.  In 1970 the bullet hole took a hard blow in a scuffle.  Dan was taken to the hospital but a blood clot ended his life.  Dan Jr. was only thirteen.  His mother, Esther Romancito survived her husband by just one year.  Dan Jr. and his siblings spent the next years in Albuquerque.

Dan Simplicio has carved his niche in the history of Southwestern Native jewelry and his contribution isn’t likely to be forgotten.  Fortunately, his distinctive work has found its way into museum collections across America and Europe.