Pittsburgh, PA. – When John and Carol Krena opened Four Winds Trading Post on Walnut Street in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood in October 1974, many people told them it wouldn’t last.

It was a cool concept with no future, they said. Who in Pittsburgh would come to them to buy Native American jewelry and art?

It turns out – a lot of people.

On October 18, 2024, the business now known as Four Winds Gallery celebrated its 50th anniversary of bringing jewelry and art from Native artists to Pittsburgh.

While the road wasn’t easy, it’s been worth it.

“We didn’t take a paycheck for years,” John Krena recalls of the early days. “You had to make enough profit to sustain, but that wasn’t the motivation. The motivation was to become one of the best art galleries in the country. We’ve worked our way up to consult with many different museums and sell pieces all over the world.”

Four Winds Gallery, located at 5512 Walnut St., Pittsburgh, hosted a special 50th anniversary celebration for longtime customers and new clients alike.

Four Winds itself has amassed a significant collection of antique Native American art and current pieces, but the gallery started small.

John, who was working at a steel mill in Weirton, West Virginia in the early 1970s, and his wife, Carol, would take trips to the American Southwest. They fell in love with the countryside, its people and culture and would bring home pieces of jewelry they bought.

Friends and acquaintances marveled at the beauty of the pieces that Carol wore. So they decided to use their trips as opportunities to purchase pieces and resell them back home. They sold at local flea markets and at parties that friends would host.

Soon, they realized they had both found their passion in life and a way for John to quit the mill.

The early days weren’t easy. John and Carol slept on the floor of Jody Vignale, a friend and a co-founder of Four Winds who remains a part of the gallery five decades later.

Every penny they made in those first years was invested back into the business to buy more merchandise and travel back and forth to the southwest.

“An important fact is that as soon as we opened the gallery, we started to try to meet the artists instead of going through wholesalers,” John said. “We visited the different reservations. We were invited into homes to eat meals with the artists.”

Carol herself became a successful jewelry artist by learning from the artists Four Winds worked with.

Building relationships with artists – and now second and third generations in their families – has been crucial to the success of Four Winds.

From pottery by the matriarch of Santa Clara Pueblo potters Margaret Tafoya to the more than 150 silver boxes that the Krenas collected that were displayed at the Heard Museum in 2022, Four Winds has always been interested in presenting artists – not just selling their art.