TSPTR x STORMCROWSILVER Thunderbird Necklace

Limited Edition

For decades the remote small town of Taos, New Mexico has been a magnet for outsiders and artists seeking refuge amid the sage and aspen trees: DH Lawrence, Aldous Huxley and Georgia O’Keefe all spent time there. In 1970 Dennis Hopper bought a 22-room adobe house, christened it the “Mud Palace” and soon filled it with a shifting counterculture cast of hippies, artists and drifters. He wrestled with the footage of The Last Movie there, his ill-starred directorial follow up to Easy Rider, screening snippets in the old Taos movie theatre, El Cortez, which he later bought and turned into his home and art studio. Taos and its native culture exerted a lifelong hold on Hopper and it was where he chose to be buried in 2010. 

This is a reproduction of a necklace Hopper had made in Taos during the 1970's as a 'momento mori'. He discusses its making and relevance in a 1977 interview with Sight & Sound Magazine. The necklace features a Southwestern Thunderbird, a prominent symbol in native Pueblo peoples culture, representing power, strength and protection, stamped with a skull motif as "....a reminder of the inevitability of death", a theme prominent in all of Hopper's own movies.

Handmade in England by StormCrow Silver, the Sterling silver Thunderbird pendant with hand stamped skull detail measures 3cm x 2.5cm and comes on a Sterling silver 56cm ball chain with sterling silver lobster clasp.