What it’s actually like
Every Native jewelry shop in Old Town claims history. Sewell’s has the receipts. Brice and Judy Sewell opened it in 1932, when Scottsdale was a farm town of a few hundred people, and the family has never stopped. Fifth Avenue did not exist yet; First Avenue did, and that is where the shop began before it followed the trade west to the curve of Fifth. It has been at 7087 East Fifth since 1984, which by Old Town standards is itself a long time.
The store is a serious one without being a cold one. Cases of Navajo silver and turquoise run the room, with the creamy black-veined white buffalo that has become something of a house signature, and there are Hopi kachinas and pueblo pottery on the shelves for the people who came for more than a bracelet. Pieces come from Navajo, Hopi, Zuni and other artists across the Southwest, and the labels tell you who made what.
What regulars praise is the staff. They know the stones, the smiths and the difference between a stamped tourist cuff and a hand-worked one, and they will explain it without a hard sell. Pricing gets called fair by people who have shopped the whole Fifth Avenue strip, which is not a phrase this trade hears often. That combination, knowledge plus honesty, is why a shop can last ninety-plus years on one category.
What to buy
A turquoise or white-buffalo cuff. The Navajo silverwork is the heart of the stock. Ask about the mine the stone came from and the smith who set it; the staff can usually answer both, and the answer is part of what you are paying for.
A Hopi kachina. Carved cottonwood figures from the Hopi mesas, sold here with the seriousness they deserve rather than as shelf decoration. Take the time to be told what each figure represents.
Pueblo pottery. Hand-built and hand-painted pots from the pueblos, from small seed jars you can carry on a plane to pieces that need a box and a plan.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
Sewell’s sits on the curve of Fifth Avenue west of Scottsdale Road, in the heart of the Fifth Avenue and downtown shopping district. Street spaces on Fifth go to the regulars, so use the free public garage on the Fifth Avenue side near the canal or the Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard and walk in; the Old Town on foot note maps both. Ride-share to the Bronze Horse Fountain at Fifth and Marshall Way and you are a two-minute stroll away.
Timing follows the seasons. January through April is high season, when snowbirds and gallery buyers fill the street and the best pieces move fast. Summer is a morning-and-evening town; the shop keeps store hours, so come before the heat. Thursday’s ArtWalk on Marshall Way, a block east, spills people onto Fifth around sunset and is a good excuse to combine the two.
Give the shop a full half hour. It is not a place to browse at a jog, and the conversation at the case is the point.
Eat while you’re there
Berdena’s, the closet-sized coffee bar a few doors along Fifth, is the morning version of this block. FnB, in Craftsman Court off the curve, is the most decorated restaurant in Arizona and the right reward for a serious purchase; book ahead. On Fifth proper, Citizen Public House does the gastropub lunch and Cartel Roasting Co. holds the far end of the street. The Sugar Bowl on Scottsdale Road, pink since 1958, is a short walk east for dessert.
How it got here
Scottsdale in 1932 was not a resort town. The 1930s were the Depression decade: a farm town of a few hundred residents and a downtown that fit in a couple of blocks around Brown Avenue and Main Street. Into that town Brice and Judy Sewell opened The Little Museum, a shop that would become Sewell’s Indian Arts, on First Avenue. The winter visitors who came for the dry air and the dude ranches wanted something Southwestern to take home, and Navajo silver and turquoise were the most portable version of the West. The Sewells built the maker relationships early and kept them.
The trade caught up with the shop after the war. The 1950s turned the farm town into the West’s Most Western Town, the Arizona Craft Center gathered the artisans, and when it burned in 1950 the newly incorporated town laid out Fifth Avenue as a curving shopping street for its resort pitch. In 1955 Lloyd Kiva New built the Kiva Craft Center on the same avenue and Native design went national from a Scottsdale side street. Sewell’s had by then been selling Native work for more than twenty years; the street that became the Valley’s jewelry row was built around a business that was already there.
The shop followed the trade to Fifth Avenue and, in 1984, into the storefront at 7087 East Fifth it still occupies. The 1980s were the decade downtown Scottsdale swung hard toward galleries and away from curios, and a Native arts dealer with half a century of credibility was well placed for the shift from souvenir to collector.
It is still family owned and operated, which is the rarest part of the story. Old Town has never been gentle to small tenants, and the Native jewelry business has its share of quick operators. Ninety-plus years on one category, in one family, with a reputation for fair pricing intact, is the kind of record that makes Sewell’s the shop the rest of Fifth Avenue is measured against.