Turquoise in the Southwest
From Native American Information Superhighway Alltribes™ Wiki
The lapidary significance of turquoise in particular to Southwest Native American Jewelry making. Turquoise has not always enjoyed its present popularity in the western world as a semiprecious stone. It is used principally in jewelry, and jewels come and go with styles in dress and ornament, except among primitive groups which employ the same ornaments through long periods because only those gems and materials locally obtainable are readily available. To place turquoise in some perspective with respect to its human history and significance it is instructive to turn to the Encyclopedia of 1937 where only a few paragraphs are given to this gem. The same edition devotes pages to jade. This is not intended to belittle the interest in turquoise nor to diminish its significance to our Southwestern Native Americans, but simply to remind ourselves that the present interest in this mineral has not always pertained. Indeed the period from 1900 until very recently found turquoise out of Vogue in the big world. Not for fifty years was turquoise in demand and in this country never before has it been of so great interest nationwide as it is today. Today , for the first time in many years, turquoise is again in vogue. The Christmas season of 1972, for the first time ever, witnessed newspaper advertising, from New York to Los Angeles of turquoise set in Native American made jewelry. True, the Southwest Native American has never lost his interest in turquoise, but the large national market for jewelry had long neglected this gem. The use of turquoise in the American Southwest, initially, and up to very recent times, employed no metal for mountings. Beads were strung and worn as necklaces; mosaics cemented to wood backgrounds served, with a bit of string through a hole and through the ear, as earrings; or turquoise was inlaid as eyes for fetishes or used as a mosaic on shells worn about the neck. The use of silver as a mounting for stones, including turquoise, dates no earlier than circa 1890. For example, Pogue’s authoritative and exhaustive treatise which covers the subject of turquoise, worldwide, among all illustrations used shows but a single piece from the Southwest mounted in silver, a simple ring with one stone. Turquoise is set, except in the Southwest, in gold. Because yellow gold forms a quite different background for blue stones than does pale silver, light blue stones are favored for finer pieces, stones often so pale that they are not wanted by workers in silver. Much Persian turquoise, held at high prices, is pale, and though hard and clear, when set in silver in ineffective; the shades are so pale that they are not used in good jewelry where stones of stronger, deeper color are required. A turquoise is not a diamond. This distinction is not made frivolously. A diamond retains its inherit character through more vicissitudes than most earthly things can survive. Turquoise is easily destroyed by heat, by fracture, and frequently by discoloration due to varied causes, from oils to bleaching chemicals or even to exposure, when mined, to the air and sun. The employment of turquoise for adornment, ceremonial use or in any way whatever requires the skills and techniques of the miner and the lapidary, The mineral, being brittle, must be handled with care in mining, in breaking it out from the matrix in which it often occurs, in cutting and polishing, and, for some users, drilling. Today strands of nuggets are still among common pieces worked up by turquoise technicians.
Treated or Stablized Turquoise
Treated or stablized turquoise is used almost totally in contemporary beads, fetishes and the popular Jocla type chokers. The mordern chokers are usually tapered from large center stone to the finer clasps and beads. The cost and worth of shaping, grinding and polishing similar beads from virgin and superior grade turquoise is quite expensive.
It is no secret in the trade that most of the 75 percent of commercial grade turquoise is treated or stablized. There is nothing new, dishonest or disgraceful about the treating or stablizing of turquoise. Diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and other precious gems are treated by radition techniques to alter and stablize color. What is dishonest and disgraceful is the misrepresentation and mislabeling of jewelry using treated and stablized turquoise at prices comparable to that of gem quality stones. In turquoise you get what you pay for and a buyer who expects handcrafted original silver and top grade turquoise at costume jewelry prices is like the ostrich with its head in the ground.
