JESSE MONONGYA (Navajo and Hopi, 1952-2024)

Jesse Monongya was a master Navajo-Hopi jeweler who lived in Scottdale, Arizona. Monongya, born in 1952, started making jewelry as a young adult after serving in the Marines and Vietnam. Brought up by adoptive parents, he did not know that he was the son of the renowned jeweler Preston Monongye (1927-1987). His Navajo grandmother, who raised him in a hogan (traditional Navajo lodge) on the Two Gray Hills reservation in New Mexico, had a profound impact on him. “When I first started making jewelry, I reached back to my grandmother’s teachings about the prayers and the four sacred colors … I would dream the colors, and I would wake up in the middle of the night and draw it out.” Their time together and the stories she shared with him about the constellations and the night sky greatly influenced his work and can be seen in the imagery of some of his iconic designs, like the night scenes and animal motifs. Distinguished for his inlay work, Monongya creates bracelets, necklaces, pendants, bolo ties, and earrings inlaid with Acoma jet, sugilite, coral, turquoise, lapis, ivory, as well as other precious and semiprecious stones.

Once he met his father, Preston Monongye (Jesse changed the last letter in his last name from an e to an a) and watched him work, Jesse’s life took a clearer path. “Then I had a dream that my mother found me—I never knew my mother either—but in my dream, she found me and told me that I would become a famous jeweler. It was like a lightning bolt hit me. And I looked at my dad's work again, and it seemed like I knew what I was doing already, right off the bat. So I worked with him a while, and then I started entering competitions, and I won … beat my father and some of the other big-name guys. So that's how it started.” Monongya apprenticed under his father for four years before starting his own business.

 Monongya has received many awards including Best of Show in 1986 at O’odham Tash in Casa Grande, Arizona; Best of Show in 1993 at the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial in Gallup, New Mexico; and Best of Division in 1992, 1993, and 1994, as well as Best of Jewelry in 1995 at the renowned Santa Fe Indian Market. In addition to making work, he has also been a champion of other Native jewelers. He assisted in the placing of historical and contemporary Native American jewelry in permanent displays at the Heard Museum. He also was the artist in residence at the Heard Museum during 1986 to 1987, teaching and demonstrating the centuries-old art of Navajo jewelry making.

Monongya’s jewelry has been featured in several group and solo exhibitions. His work is also included in major museum collections, including the Heard Museum, Northern Arizona Museum, U.S. Department of the Interior Museum, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Museum of Man, Denver Art Museum, The James Museum, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and the American Museum of Natural History.

Visit our Native American Collection page to see jewelry from our inventory of exquisite Native American jewelry and purchase the catalog Material Beauty: Modern Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo Artist Jewelers, which accompanied our 2018 exhibition here.