VERMA NEQUATEWA (SONWAI) (Hopi, b. 1949)

Verma Nequatewa is a Hopi master jeweler. She was born in 1949 in the same place where she currently lives and works—Hotevilla, a village on Third Mesa, a part of the Hopi reservation near Holbrook, Arizona.

Sonwai began her career as an apprentice for her uncle, the artist and master jeweler Charles Loloma, from 1966 to 1986. Since her uncle’s passing in 1991, Nequatewa has brought her own special look and feminine qualities to her jewelry. She uses the artistic name Sonwai, which means “beautiful,” the feminine counterpart to Loloma in the Hopi language.

Nequatewa works primarily and very precisely in 18 karat gold combined with only the finest quality stones, including coral, turquoise, lapis lazuli, opal, charolite, ironwood, and sugilite as well as diamonds, colored pearls, and fossilized ivory. She has continued Loloma’s legacy of creating remarkable inlay bracelets inspired by the rocky landscape of her birth place. Her jewelry is known for its sense of color and perfect finishes.

Nequatewa creates her elegant jewelry for private collectors and museum institutions around the world, including the Museum of Northern Arizona, in Flagstaff, and the Heard Museum, in Phoenix, which hosted her first retrospective exhibition, Sonwai: The Jewelry of Verma Nequatewa, in 2018.

In 2007, Nequatewa published the book, Visions of Sonwai, which chronicles her jewelry over a twenty-year period under the Sonwai hallmark. To learn more about Sonwai, 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.