Native American jewelry works well with modernist jewelry. That was half the point of modernist jewelry in the first place. The modernist movement was about removing ideological influences from art and architecture. So the brutalist movement in architecture wanted to remove elements of classical style that reminded the culture of Greco-Roman influences. It also wanted to remove the art nouveau influences as they contained elements of western culture that were falling out of vogue at the time. However, the key thing to remember was that it wasn’t about destroying those influences as much as it was about not adding them.

What does this mean for this piece? Well, this piece by James Bahe is at once a Navajo piece with clearly Navajo influences while it’s also modernist. Meaning it has clean lines, but the lines are also wavy — it’s a non-traditional-modernist ring. Sadly, I’m not an art historian, so I can’t make that declaration in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. But in my non-MFA eyes, this is what I see.

What does this mean? Well, it means that you can wear this piece with all of your modernist clothing and jewelry without wondering if your outfit works. Sure it does. Not only does most Native American jewelry already work well with modernist clothing, but they also work with modernist accessories. But in the case of this ring, it can do both if positioned near pieces of its ilk. And that’s fun. There’s no point in wearing jewelry if you aren’t having fun. Unless it’s for liturgical reasons, jewelry is supposed to be fun. And this piece is the key to unlocking a lot of fun.