What it’s actually like
Walk east on First Avenue from Scottsdale Road and the jewelry gets more serious as you go. At the Brown Avenue end, at 7257, is Silver Star Jewelry, a family-owned turquoise showroom established in 1979 and, by its own account, in Old Town for more than forty years. The stock is broad: rings, cuffs, squash blossom necklaces, bolo ties and belt buckles in sterling, a separate run of gold, and a gallery of kachinas, Pueblo pottery, Zuni fetishes, storytellers and sand paintings.
The shop’s claim is simple. Everything is handmade with natural stones and made for Silver Star by Navajo, Zuni and Hopi artists, by its featured designers and by its in-house jewelers. Pieces from its own line and its featured artists come with a certificate of authenticity. In a district with a long history of imitation, that’s the right thing to promise, and the shop names its featured artists rather than hiding them behind a house label.
The turquoise is what sets it apart. Silver Star sells stone by mine: Sleeping Beauty from Globe, Kingman from northern Arizona, and Royston, Sonoran, Dry Creek and Carico Lake. Comparing them side by side on the counter is a quick lesson in why two blue bracelets can differ in price by a factor of three. The shop is open every day of the year. Few Old Town stores can say that, and it suits a showroom that winter visitors come back to year after year.
What to buy
A cuff in a named turquoise. The core of the stock. Ask for Sleeping Beauty if you want the clear, even sky blue, or Royston or Dry Creek if you want stone with more character.
A squash blossom or a cluster set. The big statement pieces, often by the shop’s featured Navajo silversmiths, and the reason to visit with a budget rather than a whim.
Gold and turquoise. The 14K and 18K cases, with turquoise, diamonds and other natural stones, are less common in Old Town’s Native jewelry rooms than sterling, and they are the ones that work as everyday jewelry back home.
Something from the gallery. A Zuni fetish or a small storyteller figure is the gift for someone who doesn’t wear jewelry.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
The shop is on the south side of First Avenue near Brown Avenue, in the walkable core of Old Town. There’s very little street parking on First and Brown. The free Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard is about four minutes away on foot, and the Old Town on foot note plots a loop that takes in this block, the Old Adobe Mission and the Western storefronts of Brown Avenue.
Hours are generous. Silver Star opens every day of the year and stays open later on Friday and Saturday evenings, so it’s a reasonable stop after dinner on the block. Daytime is better for a serious purchase, when the block is quieter and there is time to compare pieces.
Do your homework first. Read our guide to buying Native American art before a big purchase, and ask for the artist’s name and the stone’s mine on anything over a few hundred dollars. The shop resizes and repairs jewelry, so a ring that is nearly right can usually be made right before you leave town.
High season runs January through April, and the Saturday Old Town Farmers Market and February’s Parada del Sol bring the biggest crowds. In summer, shop in the morning or after dark.
Eat while you’re there
First Avenue is one of the best eating blocks downtown. Cien Agaves across the street does tacos and a deep agave list, Hula’s Modern Tiki at the west end of the block pours mai tais, and Pattie’s First Avenue Lounge is the dive. Around the corner on Brown, The Mission does tableside guacamole beside the Old Adobe Mission, and the Sugar Bowl on Scottsdale Road, pink since 1958, is the sundae afterward.
How it got here
Silver Star’s block was planned before it was built. Around 1918, Akimel O’odham farmers from the Salt River community tied their wagons along First Avenue when they came to trade, and the row became known as Pima Plaza. In 1952, nine local businessmen planned both sides of the block between Scottsdale Road and Brown Avenue as one Western shopping square. They added covered walks, hitching posts and a much-argued strip of parking down the middle of the street. On the south side, Ralph Haver’s redwood Feltman Building went up mid-block at 7221–7237, and Bill Weirich’s Westernaire Shops, designed by Ray Parrish, took the southwest corner of First and Brown around an old tree where Pima riders had hitched their horses. Our Pima Plaza and the Westernaire Shops page has the full story. Silver Star’s address puts it at the Brown Avenue end of the block, east of the Haver building. We haven’t confirmed whether its storefront is one of Parrish’s buildings.
The trade it practices is older than the block. Native jewelry has been sold in Scottsdale since Sewell’s opened in 1932, and the Kiva Craft Center and the Fifth Avenue jewelry row grew up in the 1950s. By the time Silver Star was established in 1979, the trade had split. Collector galleries chased museum-grade work, and souvenir counters sold stamped silver by the tray. The family shops in between sold handmade work at prices a visitor could manage. Through the 1980s that middle market filled out, with Grey Wolf Gallery a few doors west from 1985 and Old Town Jewels growing from two cases on Fifth Avenue the year before.
Forty-five years later Silver Star is among the survivors. The family still runs it, and its pitch is the one that has worked on this street for most of a century: handmade work, named stones, and staff who know the artists. Since then the shop has built an online store, a 3D tour of the showroom and a guarantee on online orders. It’s still open every day of the year.