What it’s actually like
The Scottsdale Trading Post describes itself as small in stature and floor space, and it is. The room at 7078 East Fifth Avenue is a couple of doors from Sewell’s Indian Arts, near the Bronze Horse Fountain at Marshall Way, and it packs a lot of Native work into very little space: cases of squash blossoms and concho belts, bolo ties and buckles, and shelves of Zuni fetishes, pueblo pottery, storytellers, katsinas and baskets.
What gives it weight is history and a point of view. The shop says it has been open since 1958, and the current owner, who bought it in 1997, tells a story that runs back further. The owner’s father collected Hopi carvings and their mother pueblo pottery, and the family went from collecting to dealing; the owner was selling on the trade circuit with them by the age of eight and buying Zuni fetish necklaces and carvings for a first display case by twelve. That background shows in the stock, which leans toward pieces chosen because they are interesting rather than because the name sells.
The shop is outspoken about authenticity. Its own account warns that overseas reproductions have done real damage to the trade and to the artists, and says it would rather send a customer to a competitor than see them buy a fake. On a street where turquoise is in every window, that is the right instinct, and it is the reason to walk in.
What to buy
A Zuni fetish. Small carved animals in stone, shell or antler, and the owner’s original specialty. Ask who carved it and what the animal means.
A katsina or a storyteller. The art side of the room: Hopi carvings and pueblo storyteller figures, the kind of piece that started the family collection.
A squash blossom or concho belt. The statement pieces, Navajo and Zuni silverwork at its most traditional, priced accordingly.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
The shop sits on the western stretch of the Fifth Avenue curve, close to the Marshall Way corner. Street spaces on Fifth go to regulars; use the public garage on the Fifth Avenue side near the canal or the free Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard and walk. The Old Town on foot note maps the loop.
Read before you buy. The guide to buying Native American art explains what to ask, what to get in writing and how the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act protects buyers. Ten minutes with it makes every case on Fifth Avenue more legible.
Compare along the row. Sewell’s is a few doors east and the street has several other Native dealers; seeing the same kind of piece in two or three shops is the fastest way to learn what fair looks like. High season, January through April, brings the most buyers and the freshest stock. Thursday’s ArtWalk on Marshall Way pulls people onto this corner around sunset.
Eat while you’re there
Herb Box and Berdena’s share 7051 East Fifth, a few doors west, for lunch and coffee. Citizen Public House along Fifth is the gastropub, Cartel Roasting Co. holds the far end of the street, and FnB in Craftsman Court is the dinner that matches a serious purchase.
How it got here
Fifth Avenue was built by artisans. In 1950 the craftsmen burned out of the Arizona Craftsmen building at Brown and Main cut a new street south of the canal, and through the 1950s it became the town’s shopping street for winter visitors. Native work was central to it: Lloyd Kiva New, the Cherokee designer whose handbags went national, built the Kiva Craft Center on the avenue in 1955, and dealers in Navajo, Hopi and Zuni work lined the curve.
The Scottsdale Trading Post dates itself to 1958, near the end of that founding decade, when the street was still new and the Native arts trade was the heart of what it sold. It has stayed small, a room rather than a gallery, and that is part of why it survived; the shop says its long relationships with artists and their families are what let it find unusual, one-of-a-kind pieces.
The second chapter began in 1997, when a dealer who had grown up on the trade circuit bought it. The owner’s parents had moved from collecting Hopi carvings and pueblo pottery to dealing them, and the owner had sold alongside them since childhood, buying a first stock of Zuni fetishes with commission money at twelve and selling nearly all of it at a first show in Pasadena. That collector’s habit came with the purchase: buying what is interesting rather than what is famous, to a Fifth Avenue shop that was already four decades old.
The trade around it has changed. Reproductions made overseas, first in the Philippines and later in China by the shop’s account, have run through the market, and the shop is blunt about the harm they do to buyers and to Native artists. Its answer is the oldest one on the street: know the work, know the maker, deal fairly. A few doors from Sewell’s, which predates the avenue itself, the Trading Post is one of the reasons Fifth Avenue still means Native art to people who know what they are looking at.