Every year, the Manufacturing Jewelers & Suppliers of America (MJSA) hosts a design challenge. In the past, applicants submitted only drawings. This year, the contest has added a new physical dimension to the competition—and, for the first time, a fundraising auction, with 100% of proceeds going toward Navajo Nation and its COVID-19 relief efforts.
The changes come courtesy of Columbia Gem House, a Vancouver, Wash.–based gem supplier that has made responsible and ethical sourcing a cornerstone of its business. The company, which has sponsored the Design Challenge since 2019, donated materials to each of the six designers participating in the competition—Betty Padilla, Dana Bronfman, Dominique Larson, Donna Distefano, Helen Chantler, and Jennifer Dewey—including a small weight of silver, red anthill garnets from Navajo Nation, Arizona peridot from the San Carlos Apache Reservation, and Sleeping Beauty turquoise from the surrounding region.
Designers were encouraged, but not required, to use the stones to create a consciously designed piece of jewelry based on a fictional prompt about a young Navajo woman named Haseya Yazzie, who leaves her home in Wood Springs, Ariz., moves to New York, falls in love with an Englishman, and returns to the reservation to have a traditional Navajo wedding ceremony. The designers were asked to create “a special piece of jewelry that would honor Haseya’s heritage and give her a special connection to her home,” according to the MJSA site.
Voting on the designs is open on the MJSA site through midnight on Oct. 31. The Navajo Nation Relief Auction will run on the Columbia Gem House site Nov. 1-7.
“Because it’s a responsibility thing, this was a way to give all participants stones and metals and have them bring their pieces to life and then use that in some social fashion to support the Navajo community,” said Eric Braunwart, Columbia Gem House’s president and CEO. “We get rough material from all sorts of places around the world and we work on different projects in some locations, but in this case, when COVID hit, Navajo Nation had the highest rate of COVID infection in all of the U.S.”
Natasha Braunwart, the company’s brand and corporate social responsibility manager (and Eric’s daughter), said the Navajo community has suffered “a detrimental lack of resources” during the pandemic, including everything from PPE to hospital beds.
“Even getting people to a clinic was a problem,” Eric added. “We wondered, how can we support communities where our raw materials come from?”
Columbia Gem House has been sourcing colored stones from Navajo Nation for many years, mostly from trading posts. In 2016, the Braunwarts began working directly with a Navajo miner named Jaymus Perry.
“He collects these gems in a very traditional way because traditional Navajos don’t leave holes in the earth,” said Eric. “He rakes the desert and waits until it rains.”
Natasha pointed to a video on the Columbia Gem House Instagram page in which Perry demonstrates how he mines the anthill garnets, so named because ants in the region will push the smallest specimens of these red chrome pyrope garnets out of their homes, and down the anthill, where they lie poised for discovery.
“You find the small ones, and they serve as an indicator as to where you’d mine,” Eric said.
Once the auction concludes at the end of the day on Nov. 7, proceeds will directly benefit the Navajo Hopi Health Foundation. Although Columbia Gem House is still finalizing how the funds will be used, specifically, Natasha said the money raised will cover things such as buying gas cards for patients, handing out hand sanitizer, and constructing awnings and benches so that Navajos seeking clinical care have a shady place to sit outside while they wait to see a medical professional.
Top: Betty Padilla necklace; suggested retail, $1,800
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