Jimmie Harrison

Jimmie Harrison is a talented Navajo artist from New Mexico who specializes in southwestern contemporary inlaid jewelry. He studied under the world-renowned Navajo jeweler Jesse Monongye, which influenced Jimmie's beautiful designs. Jimmie has now been creating jewelry for over 35 years. 

Inlay jewelry is a time intensive process. First, Jimmie sketches out and outlines the jewelry designs. He then cuts silver sheets and wires to size and solders them to form a channel for inlay. He cuts stones and shells to the precise dimensions within the channels and sets them for inlay. Sun faces and figures are also outlined and ground to fit into channels. Jimmie sorts out the colors to make presentations of the four directions, the four life lines and so on. All stones and shells are set to dry and then ground with drills to place silvers dots in the holes. The final phase of production is polishing with various polishing compounds. Jimmie’s work colorfully features natural turquoise, coral, lapis, variscite, sugilite, jade, malachite, and spiny oyster shell.