Since we’ve spent Tuesdays looking, in a sense, at some of the tools of Wings’s trade — first turquoise in all its many forms; then sterling silver and methods of its use — I thought this series might best be continued with a look at other jewels and gems that he uses regularly. It won’t be a comprehensive look at gemstones across the board; there are many precious and semiprecious stones that he simply doesn’t use. Some, such as diamond, ruby, and sapphire, are simply too expensive for the average buyer of Native jewelry, even at the upper end. More, those stones don’t really tend to fit with the “Native American jewelry” style, either visually or functionally. First, they tend to be extremely costly gemstones not found on this continent, meaning that their use is in no way organically indigenous; second, the “look” that has evolved among this type of smithing and gemwork more often uses bold opaque colors and translucent stones; and third, most very precious stones tend to be faceted, rather than cut into cabochons or beads, and while the latter two are classic hallmarks of Indian jewelry, the former are not.
This doesn’t mean that he restricts himself exclusively to local stones (although those do tend to make up the bulk of his work, particularly turquoise). He does use stones that are indigenous to other lands, including forms of opal, certain agates, and the one we’ll be exploring today, which comes mostly from South Asia, the Middle East, and South America (although small deposits exist in Europe and North America, as well). He also uses “stones” that are technically not stones at all: coral, shell, jet, even Rosarita, which is essentially gold slag, a product of the refining process used in a particular South American mining and processing operation. We’ll get to them in turn as a part of this series, because their contemporary use in Native jewelry is, for all practical purposes, as various types of gemstones.
Since we began this set of Tuesday series looking at the classic Indian stone, turquoise, I thought we’d begin today with another stone in the family of blues: Lapis lazuli.
I’ve written at some length already about what lapis lazuli is, so rather than paraphrase, I’ll simply quote myself as needed. First, a bit about where it’s found:
Lapis lazuli (or lapis, for short) is, generally speaking, an expensive stone. It comes in a variety of grades, and therefore a range of quality, but the best gem-grade lapis is relatively scarce. The largest single source today is in northern Afghanistan, where it is mined commercially. It’s also found in some areas of Pakistan, Iran (i.e., Persia, whence comes its name), Eastern Europe, and South America (specifically, Chile), with small amounts extracted from other parts of Europe and some areas of Canada and the United States.
Lapis has been used decoratively since time immemorial (or at least since the Neolithic Era, according to scientists). It’s been found in ancient art and artifacts, everything from free-standing carvings and fetishes to inlaid accents on pottery and handles on weapons to jeweled accents on statuary and sarcophagi and the tombs of the Pharaohs (yes, even that of King Tut). Ground into powder, it was reportedly used as eyeshadow by Cleopatra; more recently (i.e., in the Late Middle Ages), it was mixed into paint known as ultramarine, regarded as the finest and most valuable blue pigment in the art world of the day.
Are you seeing a pattern yet?
King Tut. Cleopatra. A stone associated with royalty.
It is most likely this connection that has given rise, in recent years, to the New Age-y idea that it is a stone of leadership, wealth, and power. I’m not sure that any of those things are particularly healthy goals, either in the abstractor put into human practice, but many of those who steal from Native traditions do so in the service of their own form of “Prosperity Gospel,” and concepts of crystals with particular inherent powers to bring about those goals are a central feature. Some of our peoples do associate certain qualities or traits with particulars tones and substances, used for artistic and/or spiritual purposes, but they are intrinsic to each people’s beliefs only, and none of us practices that sort of crystal hooey.
That said, lapis has long been a favorite of many Native artisans, for very obvious reasons: its beautiful, intense color, a sort of perfect, archetypal blue that works well to translate symbolic imagery that the color blue may represent in a given cultural tradition.
For those whose work revolves in large part around the choosing and use of gemstones, its widely variable, if subtle, matrices also make it a great option for jewelry making and gemwork.
The ring and earrings above, and the cuff bracelet immediately below, are a perfect example.
These rectangular lapis cabochons, four in all, were purchased together as part of a set. The initial attraction, of course, was the intense and brilliant indigo-to-cobalt hue. Viewed closely, however, all clearly came from the same deposit; all have the same tone-on-tone “leopard skin” matrix: tiny dots and circles flowing together in a vaguely circular set of patterns, deep cobalt seemingly layered atop (but actually immersed within) the intensely clear indigo shade.
It’s actually a bit of an unusual matrix pattern for lapis; most today that’s purchased for ordinary gemwork, particularly that which is cut into commercial, mass-produced, calibrated cabochons, has little visible matrixing. They are often simply a plain royal blue. They’re beautiful in color, but to me, they lack the character of less commercially “perfect” stones. An example of what I mean appears in the earrings shown immediately below: beautiful, glossy rectangular cabochons that are nonetheless untreated, wholly natural; you can see the speckling in the blue itself, highlighted by the gray-white inclusions of host rock. Those gray spots on the right-hand side of each earring, where the stone looks a little rough? It was. Just the tiniest bit — overall, the stones were silky smooth, but in those places, you could feel the tiny pits and pores that gave the stones their texture and character, that told you they were real.
Again, quoting form my own earlier words:
So what is lapis lazuli? It’s a compound mineral with a core material known as lazurite, named for the place in ancient Persia where it was mined, and the root of Romance-language variants of the word azure (for “blue”). [The word “lapis” reportedly was simply the ancient Latin word for stone, but oddly, it’s the part of the name that stuck.] It also typically contains one or more of the minerals calcite, pyrite, or sodalite, which provide the gray-white, yellowish, and blue tendrils of matrix, respectively, that are often found in the stone. It often contains other trace minerals, as well, including the same mica that is found in Taos Pueblo’s own clay.
Sodalite in gem form is its own semiprecious stone, a slightly lighter blue in color and one that is often mistaken for a less expensive form of lapis that I’ll discuss below. It’s a beautiful stone in its own right, and much less expensive, but also lacks lapis’s intensity of color and appearance. Calcite also likewise appears as its own gem, usually in shades of white that combine a sheer opacity with some translucence, or in clear and translucent golds and orange shades. It’s also relatively inexpensive on its own, but makes for a beautiful crystalline matrix in lapis. Pyrite, of course, is “fool’s gold” (despite usually looking more silver than gold), and is a common matrix mineral found in American turquoise.
Some lapis, of course, contains matrices that are a bit more exciting:
This was one of my favorite pieces, with one of my favorite individual stones of all the thousands that he’s used over the years. [The piece itself now resides with a dear friend on the other end of the country.] See those gold-colored flecks? Those are not calcite, nor are they pyrite. They’re distinctly metallic, and also distinctly yellow in color. My best guess is that they are actually tiny inclusions of a precious metal, and I’d put money on its being gold. In some of the places where lapis is mined, so are a diversity of precious metals, including gold, and it’s exceedingly likely that some of those metals have, over the eons, filtered into the lapis deposits here and there. The stone in this cuff was truly spectacular; the photo does not do justice to how it looks in natural light.
Most lapis, though, is less showy, more subtle, largely confining itself to ranges of blues:
Some, like that in the five-stone cuff shown immediately above, are a bright royal blue with variable matrices of lighter and darker blues. Others are like the one shown in the spider cuff immediately below:
This type of lapis appears in blues that range from violet to midnight, with almost no inclusions of host rock or other minerals. The cuff shown here contains a large (and like the earlier one, extremely costly) oval cabochon of lapis lazuli in a near-purple shade of violet blue — truly a color associated with royalty. The matrix, with the exception of a few microscopic pale flecks on the right-hand side, is almost entirely a mottling of midnight blue. It’s a stone both fabulous and fantastic, hardly to be believed . . . and, of course, its cost was commensurate with that, with (in addition to amount of silver and the labor involved) explains this piece’s higher price tag.
However, as I’ve said before:
[Lapis] comes in a range of grades, and not all of it is suitable for gemological purposes. The best, in intense shades of deep cobalt and indigo, can be extraordinarily expensive. Less brilliant (and often less clear) hues, while still not cheap, are significantly lower in price, making them more cost-effective for the kind of production quantities needed to make beads and mass-market cabochons. there is also a lesser-quality gem-grade version of the stone known as denim lapis, so named because of the paler, nearly denim-blue color of the stone. It has a higher proportion of calcite in the stone compared to the other minerals, making the blues lighter in hue but also providing more (and more visible) inclusions in shades of gray and white. It’s still a beautiful stone, albeit usually a bit lighter in color, and it’s often more cost-effective for beadworkers and other artisans to acquire and use regularly.
This is what denim lapis looks like:
And the color genuinely does look like that of your favorite pair of well-worn jeans. It’s closer in hue to sodalite, but if you’re able to compare the two side by side, even with the naked eye, you can usually see a much greater depth and intensity of color in denim lapis. It tends to contain white calcite and pyrite inclusions, making it appear lighter than it would without any matrixing at all. And in recent years, it’s been harder to find denim lapis cabochons in all but the smallest sizes, which raises the question of whether the veins are becoming tapped out. If so, we can expect to see an increase in its price, as well.
Lapis lazuli is a spectacular stone, one that is perfectly suited to much of the symbolic expression inherent in Native art. Its range of color and subtle patterning are an added bonus for people like me, synesthetes for whom color assumes tangible, three-dimensional identity and form. It’s also perhaps the most perfect, ideal, archetypal expression of my favorite color: It’s the very essence of Blue.
~ Aji
Note: The ring and cuff pictured in the series at the top of this post remain available for purchase, as does the spider cuff near the end; each is linked to its appropriate page in the Silverwork Galleries, where you can review their detailed descriptions. The other items have all long since sold, but if you’re interested in a custom piece like one of those pictured, Wings can certainly create one for you (subject, of course, to natural variation in the stones).]
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
