Lorraine H. Johnson

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Lorraine H Johnson was born in 1917. She grew up in a small town in minnesota. her contact with native american culture evolved in the Southwest when she moved to the west coast. Her brother -in-law, Bernard Richardson was librarian at navaho community at its' beginning in 1969. she truly appreciated the beautiful jewelry work of the southwest tribes. She would travel to the southwest on buying trips meeting jewelry makers and acquiring their finest.

Lorraine viewed dealing in Native American jewelry not only as a business but also as an enjoyable social scene attending shows and traded stories and ideas with Native American jewelers and her fellow collectors. We recently learned that one of our eBay friends traded with her at some of the early shows in Santa Fe during the early 70's.

Lorraine's passion and eye for beautiful Native American jewelry are represented in this collection.

Around 1986 Lorraine became ill and was forced to give up her life's passion of collecting anything and everything under the sun. She took her cherished collection of Native American jewelry and left over inventory and placed it in a huge vault she had at her house in Encinitas California where she lived out her life.

LORRAINE HELEN JOHNSON
April 26, 1916-April 5, 2008
Lorraine Helen Johnson, 91, of Encinitas died Saturday. She was born in Minnesota and was a
business owner.
Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune from 4/11/2008 - 4/12/2008

We respectfully honor her for the legacy that she has left behind and would like to thank her family for allowing us to acquire so many of her beautiful pieces from her collection. Our hearts go out to you.

Tony Moore Collection

Born and educated in England, Anthony Moore has lived in many parts of the world including Japan. Hong Kong, France and the USA which he has also made Florida his home. He has been collecting antiques and works of art for more than 40 years and has built a variety of collections. Tony fell in love with Native American jewelry, particularly attracted by the beauty of the turquoise stone. We were fortunate enough to assist him in upgrading and expanding his existing collection by acquiring many attractive, high quality and in some cases historically significant Native American handmade jewelry.

The recent and unexpected passing of his Father and the wish of his children that he pass on his Native American jewelry collection to those in the United State who will truly appreciate it. This gives us the opportunity to offer you a large number of special pieces dating from the turn of the century through today.

In order to assist us in evaluating a collection of this size well over 200 pieces, we hired recognized turquoise expert Dayton Simmons to help us evaluate the quality and rarity of the turquoise used in the majority of the new jewelry. During his visit Dayton was kind enough to give us a crash course in recognizing treated turquoise with his GIA lecture, Turquoise: Natural or Otherwise. He included us in his visual evaluation of all 60 pieces which added to our confidence in determining the quality of turquoise. Looking at all of this jewelry is pretty overwhelming as the pieces vary in age and quality.

We want to be able to offer this wonderful collection to everyone no matter their level of collecting. We will be representing his collection at shows and online. Feel free to contact us if you see something interesting.

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