Turquoise and Spiny Oyster

I fell in love with turquoise in New Mexico. The landscape there is so muted, the bright blue stones are so cheerful and bright in that setting, as bright and amazing as diamonds in more colorful and varied environments. It is one of those stones that, like amber, is more valuable for its inclusions, which are caused by iron in the stone. Good turquoise is extremely beautiful, naturally cerulian, Carribean blue, sea green, aqua. It's considered a lucky stone and worn for protection by the native peoples in the area. I've heard derogatory comments about Chinese turquoise, which is often a composite, but according to a jewelry store owner I talked to, Chinese turquoise proper is often used in New Mexican jewelry; it's the composite, which is turquoise dust and leftovers mixed with resin that jewlery afficianados despise.

In Albuquerque I bought a necklace from an Indian woman with small silver bead separators, turquoise rocks ranging in color from blue to aqua, strung on traditional carpet string. In Santa Fe I found a vendor by the Governor's Palace I first met back in 2000...she shapes turquoise by hand into almost perfect round beads. Back in 2000 the $40 she wanted for a pair of studs seemed unreasonable; this time as a gift I was given a pair, which cost $37 this much later. Wearing them is like having a piece of sky on your ears. I treaure them. She had a gorgeous long necklace made of her beads with silver cone headers, but I was too afraid to ask the price, given the price for 2 of the beads. The necklace was magnificent, a museum piece. Yesterday while walking back home a turquoise necklace in a store window caught my eye; I stopped in and tried on the necklace, which was large flat disks of bright turqoise so polished it looked like lucite--to my amazement it was a mere $27. It was so close in style to the necklace I bought from the native woman (and had no spacer beads and a cheap clasp, which made the design a bit rough for my taste) that I passed. However, I did cave in and buy a necklace with smaller, coin-like disk of cerulian turquoise strung between gold chain and with 3 citrine-colored crystal beads--$34. After turquoise being thrown together with silver, turquoise and gold seems so surprising, and in my opinion elevates the stone to its true selmiprecious nature.

Also while in New Mexico I discovered spiny oyster. My colleague and I were shopping on a freezing, snowy January day when I picked up a silver bracelet with a large bright orange-yellow stone like a piece of sunshine. I was told the stone was called spiny oyster, and the jewlery maker showed me the original shell, which comes in varying shades of orange, red, and purple. But I fell in love with the sunshine orange color. In Santa Fe I found a pendant with silver crimped only along the outside, a bright burst of sunshine to perch on a chain around the throat. I don't recall the exact circumstances that caused me to pass it by, but part of it was being unwilling to pay the $20, for which I have been kicking myself ever since. The pendant I remembered showed off the stone and minimized the silver, and this combination turned out to be almost inpossible to find. A return trip to Santa Fe was unsuccessful; the young Native girl was not there on that snowy weekday. However, a visit to Skip Meisel in Albuquerque did yield a nice chunk of spiny oyster, bright and rough (the polishing takes away the sunshine effect, in my opinion, as do even slightly dark shades of orange), the right size and shade of orange, for half price as expected, $9.50. However, as usual the object not purchased loomed idealistically in my mind; I keep telling myself that if it was as wonderful as I remember, I would have purchased it without hesitation. The Skip Meisel pendant is, by description, exactly what I was looking for (which still does not prevent me for looking for other Platonically ideal spiny oyster jewlery). The second trip to Santa Fe also yielded earrings, unseen elsewhere, that exactly matched the pendant. They are appropriately cheerful and startlingly bright, and go well with gray dresses, a bright orange pashmina, and the turquoise hand-cut studs from the other Santa Fe artist.