Description
Jovanna comes from a family of exceptional Zuni jewelers, noted for their innovation.
Her late grandfather, Leo Poblano, mother Veronica, and brother Dylan, are all celebrated for bringing Zuni jewelry far beyond traditional styles.
Like her mother and brother, she brings Zuni tradition into the 21st-century with creative designs featuring unusual materials and designs.
Her work is featured in museums and collections, world-wide.
Her chosen specialty is combining finely constructed beadwork with wonderful stones, in unexpected, but stunning, necklaces.
Beadwork has a tradition, in Zuni, but Jovanna taught herself that skill, with gorgeous results.
Meticulous attention to detail and superb craftsmanship are hallmarks of her pieces, along with a brilliant sense of color and texture.
This dazzling necklace is an example of her talent, taste, and workmanship.
Faceted, iridescent Czechoslovakian crystals, in two different shapes, and tiny, gold-colored beads, are artfully composed to set off the large, natural sugilite stone.
One of the splendors of this magical necklace is the subtle interplay of purples and metallic gold, seen in the beads themselves, and the pendant.
Depending on how the light hits the faceted crystal beads, they blaze with flashes of bronze-gold, dark, or brilliant magenta.
The lovely sugilite stone gently modulates from pale lavender, at the bottom, to dark purple at the top.
It is framed with four rows of tiny beads, both iridescent crystals, and gold-hued, and backed with hand-sewn, metallic gold leather.
The bail that attaches it to the three strands of crystals is composed of seven rows of the tiny purple crystals, that match the rest of the necklace, beautifully.
Even the cones, that attach the necklace to the gold clasp, are minutely beaded, to match.
There is a final border around the stone, of minuscule, iridescent crystal cubes that are separated from one another, so they form a kind of lacy frame to the stone.
Dramatically, a diagonal band of both the teen-tiny gold and iridescent crystal, beads slices across the sugilite stone forming a triangle within the larger triangular form.
Graduated rows of crystal dangles hang below the pendant, echoing its shape, inversely.
The whole necklace is magnificent, opulent, luxurious – and, just as splendidly compatible with turtlenecks, other sweaters, and other “regular” clothes.
Of course, for a special occasion, it seems fit for a queen!
In the words of a prestigious museum of Native art, “Jovanna’s pieces truly fit the description ‘wearable art’”, and this necklace is truly wearable, as well as a work of art.
