Angie Reano Owen is credited with reviving the tradition of inlaid jewelry in the 1970s, when the market had shifted to heishi beads and silver-and-turquoise jewelry. "I told my dad I wanted to do something different because everyone was doing heishi," she said. She was fascinated by her mother's inlay work, including "Depression jewelry" made from plastic and car batteries. In her twenties, she studied Ancestral Pueblo jewelry in museums and private collections, consciously modeling her work after ancient styles.

"I began doing the actual traditional patterns of the prehistoric things," she says. "Later on, the more I refined it, I decided I should have my own style. I shouldn't just be copying what the ancestors did." Owen's distinctive touches include using black glue to outline and emphasize her mosaic patterns. Yet her style remains grounded in traditional mosaic designs created from turquoise and other stones on a shell base.

Santo Domingo Pueblo
One of the largest, most populous and most prosperous of the Rio Grande Pueblos, Santo Domingo (or Ke-wha in the Keresan language, still widely spoken at the Pueblo) is admired for clinging strongly to its traditions. Its pride, conservatism and relatively large size (c. 3,200 people) have produced a solid core committed to maintaining traditional ceremonies and beliefs. This long standing adherence to tradition can also be seen in its jewelry.

Santo Domingo today is the leading producer of the tiny handmade beads known as heishi. Some heishi necklaces contain over 10,000 miniscule beads and look like strands of hair. Its artists are also famous for inlaid pieces, often featuring turquoise on shell bases. Much Santo Domingo jewelry is strikingly similar to Ancestral Pueblo, or Anasazi, jewelry unearthed at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde—some of it more than a thousand years old.

Mosaic Inlay
Shell mosaic is a trademark style of Santo Domingo jewelry, drawing on a tradition dating back many centuries. Many modern Pueblo artists consciously style their inlaid jewelry after styles and patterns unearthed by archaeological research, found in rock art or on display in museums.