Last week, we looked at the turquoise pretenders: stones that are frequently misidentified and mislabeled as turquoise, whether accidentally of intentionally.
Today, we look at ways in which actual turquoise can be turned into its own pretender: gemstone treatments that turn natural turquoise into something much more artificial. We’ll also look at treatments that do not fundamentally alter the nature of the stone itself, but are often confused with synthetic processes that decrease value.
In gemstone and jewelry markets, including the Indian jewelry market, there’s great disparity of opinion as to exactly how much “treatment” of a stone is acceptable. “Experts” of all sorts vary in terms of how they define what constitutes “real turquoise.” This post simply represents our own take on it, which, typically, comes down to “It’s complicated.” Key is knowing what it is you’re getting; provided you know what’s been done with and to a given stone, if it still speaks to you and you still want it, that’s what’s important. The key is that you be given all relevant information, and thus the opportunity to decide for yourself.
Identifying whether a given stone has been treated, and if so, how, gets tricky. In some instances, the only way to find out requires destruction of the stone itself, which is not really a feasible solution for either seller or buyer. In others, the treatment is sufficiently subtle and unobtrusive that it’s nearly impossible to tell. In still others, the treatments themselves are “natural,” and so they fall into a slightly different category. Finally, finding that a stone has been treated is not automatically a sign of bad intent: Unless the seller is also the person who cut, cabbed, and treated the stones, s/he is likewise relying on the word of a supplier. Because of the difficulty in telling some treated stones from untreated ones absent the destruction mentioned earlier and sophisticated chemical analyses, truly honest mistakes are not uncommon — indeed, these days, they’re probably fairly frequent. While we try never to buy stabilized cabochons intentionally, we have bought stones that were represented to us as being natural, only to find out later that they were stabilized. It simply means a reduction in the sales price of any pieces that contain them, and a warier eye the next time around.
Now, some “treatments” are not, strictly speaking, treatments at all. They might more accurately be described as forms of processing, or as methods of handling the stone. There’s nothing wrong with these practices whatsoever, and indeed, you may find that your jewelry has a much longer life as a result. We’ll cover these, too — indeed, we’re going to begin with them. Below, we begin with a look at various terms that you’ll see frequently in the turquoise jewelry market, and try to translate each into plain English.
CALIBRATED
This is a term that frequently accompanies discussion of gemstone treatments, but it has nothing to do with anything synthetic. Rather, it refers to the lapidary method used: Instead of being cut individually to conform to the stone’s natural dimensions or a custom size, a calibrated stone is one cut to mass specifications for commercial use.
In other words, take, say, a large chunk of Kingman turquoise. Perhaps it has an especially attractive matrix, and you want to use it in a big, bold belt buckle. You’re planning on using the entire stone, save whatever detritus is left after cutting and cabbing. You’d take it to a lapidary artisan to have it cut to order, and it might turn out to be unusually large and/or weighty; it might also be less-than-uniform in terms of shape, depth, and texture.
Suppose, on the other hand, that that chunk of Kingman has no particular resonance for you in and of itself. Instead, you simply want to maximize its use and value. In such a situation, you’d likely ask the lapidary specialist to cut it into a set of calibrated cabochons: cabs in various standardized sizes and shapes that can be used in a wide variety of settings and pieces. In this situation, you might ask for a half-dozen 8mm oval cabs, a half-dozen 6mm square cabs, and as many tiny round cabs as can be made of the remainder of the stone. Save for whatever variation exists in the color and matrix found in different areas of the original nugget, the cabs of each type will be virtually interchangeable. They will also be, generally speaking, balanced — i.e., more or less evenly weighted for ease and security of setting them into bezels. They also may sometimes be backed, which is discussed immediately below.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying a calibrated cabochon. For many jewelers, they’re far easier to work with, and because they are generally mass-produced (in far greater commercial quantities than in the hypothetical described immediately above), they’re much less expensive, for both artisan and ultimate buyer. They’e also the mark of a newer stone, since this kind of commercial lapidary was virtually impossible until well into the 20th Century. Of course, there are lapidary artists who still do custom cutting on a stone-by-stone basis; it raises the cost significantly, but done right, it produces beautifully unique gems.
The three cabochons shown immediately above are examples of calibrated stones that have not been backed, nor, judging from the porosity and level of pitting in them (which is visible as well as tangible), have they been treated. To find calibrated cabochons that have not been treated, though, sometimes takes a little work.
BACKED
I mentioned backed stones briefly above. It’s exactly what it sounds like: the cabochon is placed onto a smooth, balanced backing in order to keep the stone in place, weighted properly, and made more solid and stable for setting without (necessarily) the need to inject synthetic polymers into the stone.
There’s nothing wrong with using backed stones, either. With stones like turquoise that tend to be fragile, it’s often a wise move that ensures that a piece of jewelry will last perhaps many decades longer than it would unbacked.
The stone shown at left and right is a photo of the same stone: a free-from cabochon of natural turquoise with no backing. This one is no doubt sturdy and stable enough on its own to set into bezel as-is. Unfortunately, not all of them are so sturdy (or have such depth). The two nearly-matched triangular cabochons shown in the photo at the very top of this post, set on their sides, give a clear picture of what contemporary backing looks like. When used, they will be set deeply enough into a bezel to prevent the backing from showing; only the turquoise itself will be visible above the top of the setting.
There are a couple of forms of backing that involve layers of complexity, both literally and figuratively. They’re known as doublets and triplets, and in addition to turquoise, you’ll find them in a variety of rare and/or fragile stones.
With turquoise, doublets are the most common, and they’re more or less like what’s described above: a thin slice of natural turquoise stone affixed to a backing. The difference here is that the backing tends to constitute most of the cabochon’s depth, while the turquoise itself is merely a thin veneer-like slice atop it. It’s a way to coax a piece of fine jewelry out of a minuscule amount of rare, expensive, and/or exceptionally fragile turquoise without losing your precious raw material to fracture or complete breakage. In the photo shown here at right is another old natural free-form turquoise cabochon, in substance, much like the one shown in the front-and-back photos above. You can see the backing along the bottom of the cab, and as you can see, it’s thicker than the turquoise itself. This is a very old piece — the backing itself is some sort of natural substance, rather than polymer or plastic — and it probably doesn’t precisely qualify as a doublet, as that term is usually defined, but it demonstrates the dynamic at work.
Triplets, on the other hand, are cabochons that contain three layers: At bottom is the backing, again, the deepest, most substantial part of the cab. In the middle is the wafer-thin slice of stone, which may also be narrower than the backing. The top layer is a resin that seals the other layers together and protects the slice of stone. This is a common practice with rare or hard-to-get stones that tend to be both very fragile and very expensive, such as opals.
OILED
Turquoise that has been oiled is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a practice that goes back thousands of years, and represents an early recognition of turquoises’ natural porosity and fragility. Its use was two-fold: to increase a stone’s beauty; and to preserve and protect it.
In ancient times, of course, any oils used would have been “natural,” and it’s a form of treatment that doesn’t really alter the stone’s essential nature in any fundamental way. Indeed, turquoise that is worn against the skin (or touched frequently with the hands) is “oiled” anyway, as a practical matter; its natural absorbency makes it susceptible to oils in the skin, and it’s one of the reasons why natural blue turquoise gradually turns more greenish over time.
Depending on the type and quantity of oil used, it can have the effect simply of moisturizing the stone, in hopes of increasing its longevity, or it can provide a bit of a sealing effect. In ancient times, the wetness of the oil gave the stone a glossier appearance, an effect achieved today to a more intense degree with lubricants used in the cutting and cabbing process.
WAXED
In ancient times (and not so ancient ones, as well), turquoise was often waxed for the same reasons as it was oiled: to enhance its beauty by giving it a glossier appearance; and to preserve the stone and protect it from breakage by moisturizing it while filling in any chinks or cracks.
Generally speaking, waxing is a more “natural” form of treatment; most early waxes were themselves natural substances. They also did not tend to alter the stone in any fundamental way; its presence is perhaps more like the same effect as the accumulation of skin oils and other substances that accrete to a gemstone through decades of regular wear.
Both oil and wax had one major infirmity as a treating agent, wax particularly so: As it dried over time, it would harden or congeal and discolor, creating what is known as “bloom” on the surface of the stone. This discoloration is often whitish, and it may feel waxy. Expert lapidary artists and restorers can often clean the substance from the stone’s surface so that something approximating its original color and texture are once again visible.
TREATED
When you see turquoise described as treated, be prepared for it to mean any of a number of different things. We consider any turquoise stone that has been fundamentally altered or “enhanced” in some way to be treated. Examples include waxing, oiling, stabilizing, dying, and even reconstituting (although the definition of this last term is a bit attenuated, as we’ll see below; as a set of separate processes, it’s perhaps better defined as being associated with treatment).
Some in the jewelry business consider backing and calibration to be “treatment.” As should be clear above, we don’t agree; neither process [necessarily] involves any fundamental alteration to the natural stone. While it is indeed true that much of the calibrated stone market — indeed, today, probably a majority of it — consists of treated stones, treatment is not a condition for calibration. This connection is, however, probably the source of the practice by some in the business of defining calibration as “treatment.”
Backing likewise does not require treatment, although I have no doubt that there are producers who back stabilized or otherwise-treated stones. In my experience, though, backing is generally used as a substitute for treatment: When faced with an especially fragile (and often especially valuable) natural stone that, placed as-is in a setting, is likely to be subject to breakage, lapidary artisans frequently opt for backing the natural stone rather than saturating or injecting it with chemicals and plastics that render it artificial.
ENHANCED
When you see references to enhanced turquoise, chances are that the term is being used as a synonym for “treated.” In other words, it could refer to anything from simple oiling or waxing to stabilization of various sorts to dye treatments.
Originally, the term “enhanced” was allegedly first coined by the creators and proponents of what has become known as the “Zachery process” or “Zachery method,” discussed below. Today, the “enhanced” label has been extended to encompass virtually any sort of treatment. Even so, however, it only applies to stone that, however treated, altered, or processed, began life as a wholly natural stone.
Unfortunately, as with anything else in a culture whose discourse is dominated by spin, words like “enhanced” become Orwellian in this context. The very word implies that its object is “improved,” “made better”; in the context of the Indian jewelry market, “that necessarily means “made more valuable.” In fact, the opposite is true; “enhanced” turquoise is by definition less valuable than natural turquoise (although it may have a much longer life as a part of a jewelry piece).
Worse, in recent years, I’ve heard reports of entirely artificial “turquoise” being passed off as somehow “real” under the rubric of “enhanced.” When you’re interested in a piece that’s described as “enhanced,” question the seller closely to be sure that the enhancement isn’t something that renders it valueless for your specific purposes.
STABILIZED
Much of the turquoise on the market today is stabilized, and that word, too, has come to mean a variety of things. Some forms of stabilization are relatively benign; others utterly destroy a stone’s inherent value.
As I noted when I first began this series, turquoise is a relatively fragile stone: It’s porous, and often brittle, and thus frequently subject to fracture. This fragility, in fact, contributes significantly to the relative scarcity of wholly natural stone — and therefore, to its value. From the earliest human use of turquoise as a form of adornment, people have attempted to neutralize the impacts of its fragility in a variety of ways. A few paragraphs above, we discussed two early quasi-natural methods, oiling and waxing, methods of moisturizing the stone, filling in pits and gaps, and providing a slight protective veneer without fundamentally altering the stone itself. But with the rise of plastics has come a whole new set of ways of stabilizing turquoise, and many of these do transform the stone in irrevocable ways.
In the preceding section, I mentioned what is often called the “Zachery process,” or sometimes the “Zachery method,” so named by its inventory, one James E. Zachery, an electrical engineer by profession who was reportedly an avid turquoise dealer and collector. It was an early form of the modern stabilization techniques, first used in the 1980s. I’ve seen various descriptions of the process, as well as various claims both to know and to own it, but it remains a proprietary method. While some experts have been able to reverse-engineer the process to a degree, the full method allegedly remains unknown to all but its creator and his successors. Descriptions I’ve seen involve soaking the stone in various minerals and chemicals, which, upon drying, fill in the stone’s natural chinks and pores and create a protective finish. Some accounts say that a charge of electrical current is added to the chemical bath to ensure hardening; some accounts also insist that the “bath” is wholly natural and consists only of minerals that themselves occur naturally in turquoise. Some of these likewise insist that the process is so good, so “natural,” that it cannot be detected except by destroying the stone and running a chemical analysis on the detritus. Personally, I take all claims of “naturalness” with much more than a grain of salt.
Since the “Zachery process” was invented, however, turquoise stabilization has become big business. It’s also undergone several modifications in approach. These days, you can still find turquoise that is stabilized the “old” way, via extended immersion in a chemical bath. Some practitioners of this method hold it out as somehow “natural,” but if it’s adding something unnatural to the stone on a permanent basis, it’s anything but.
Perhaps more common today are methods that are quicker, cleaner, and much more susceptible to high-volume commercial processing: high-pressure baking or injection processes that saturate the stone with resins or polymers. These substances fill in pores, chinks, and cracks, harden the stone itself, and create a protective finish that helps prevent fracture and breakage. They also prevent discoloration from oils in the wearer’s skin and the accumulated dust and dirt of daily life. Unfortunately, they also alter the nature of the stone itself, turning it from something wholly natural into something largely synthetic.
There is a commonly-used method to determine whether a stone is stabilized with chemicals, polymers, or plastics (or is a wholly synthetic stone created a in lab). Take an ordinary sewing needle, heat the tip in a lighter or other flame, and touch it to the stone. If it contains plastic (at least in the spot where the needle touches it), it’ll be immediately apparent from the smell. [If you’ve ever had the misfortune to smell the rancid odor of burning plastic, you’ll recognize what I mean.] However, be aware that this will not catch every type of stabilization or other treatment. As noted above, some methods are virtually undetectable absent breaking the stone apart and running a chemical analysis on the resulting dust.
There’s one more aspect to stabilization that often goes unremarked. While many tout as one of its signature benefits the fact that it prevents natural discoloration, keeping the stone a fresh shade of blue (or green, as the case may be), what’s left unsaid is that many commercial processors do not limit their stabilization to hardening the stone. They also “stabilize” the color. In other words, they “improve” it — by dying it a deeper, more intense shade. This is most common with blues: Much of the blue turquoise out there is relatively pale in color, robin’s-egg or lighter, and that doesn’t fit the market perception of what the color should be. Since misinformation and market spin have created a demand for turquoise that ranges from deep sky blue to a near-indigo, colors not often found naturally occurring in most veins and deposits, processors have “remedied” this “problem” (one that they, to a not-insignificant degree, created themselves, and purposefully so) by adding color to the stabilizing solutions, creating not merely a hybrid-synthetic stone, but a synthetic color, as well.
DYED
To us, turquoise that has been dyed is not real turquoise anymore at all. Besides altering the natural color in ways that compromise the stone’s aesthetic integrity, the very injection of the dye itself adds a synthetic substance that converts the stone from something that is natural into something that is not.
As noted above, market artifice has created a demand for “turquoise” that really has very little to do with the actual stone called turquoise. Rather, the demand is for a “stone” (or, rather, a stone-like material) that fits preconceived notions of what turquoise should look like. Hmm . . . now, where have we encountered that dynamic before? Oh, yes, that’s right: It’s one Native peoples face every day with our failure to conform to the artifice of Hollywood stereotypes. And here’s that same dynamic again, spilling over into the Indian jewelry market. We can’t get away from it.
At any rate, the cultural dominance of “the market” dictates that turquoise should be certain things and should not be others (kind of like us). What it should not be is a naturally fragile stone, one subject to breakage and discoloration with ordinary wear. What it should be is able to withstand hard wear and never fracture, crack, or break, and it should be a stereotypically intense, brilliant blue — which is to say, a color largely not found in nature (again, kind of like us). Some dye jobs are fairly obvious to spot, at least for those with experience in this area. Others are more subtle.
Perhaps the most common (and in some ways most infuriating) dye practice is that of darkening the blue of the stone. As noted above, this often occurs jointly with the stabilization process, but it can also be done on its own. For relatively matrix-free stone, it gives the turquoise a glossy and decidedly plasticky look. It’s something that frequently appears on commercial sites and home-shopping television programs. As with price, so with appearance: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
There’s another dyeing practice that is a bit different: It involves adding unusual colors to natural turquoise to create exotic-looking stones. So-called Mohave Green and Mohave Purple [the spelling reflects Arizona’s own corruption of “Mojave”] are examples of this sort of turquoise, a type we’ve discussed here before. It’s produced by the current owners of the Kingman Mine in Arizona, and they’re straightforward about the fact that it’s dyed. A lot of what comes out of the Kingman deposits now is relatively low-grade (although there’s also some beautiful high-grade stone, too; we’ll be featuring some of that in pieces yet to come), as is the case with many other contemporary mining operations. Much of it is too chalky to use in jewelry absent treatment, and it tends to be very pale besides.
Some of this material, however, can indeed be used in jewelry, and these folks have found a way to make it look much more attractive than it would in its natural state — by impregnating the stone directly with brightly colored dyes. The dye used in Mohave Purple turquoise turns light blue stone into a broad spectrum of shades ranging from lavender and lilac to plum and violet, and it darkens existing matrices into intense bronze and nearly-metallic brown and black shades. That used to create Mohave Green transforms very pale blue and green tones into electric, sometimes neon shades of green, from yellowy chartreuse to deep lime, with a golden-bronzed matrices. Interestingly, I recently came across a foreign monograph describing these two forms of turquoise simultaneously as “all-natural” and yet “treated,” with cloaked and veiled references to some sort of mysterious origins, while acknowledging that this stone is “reportedly” found in the U.S. Yes, this mysterious and magical stone is hidden away from prying eyes, deep in the wilds of . . . Arizona, where it it sold openly in person and on the Internet.
There is one other practice that involves, dyeing . . . but it does not involve turquoise. We’ll cover that near the end of this post.
So, how to tell whether a given piece of turquoise is dyed? It used to be fairly easy, because the dye jobs were superficial. With beads, you only had to separate them on the strand and look at the center, where the bead is drilled: If that area is white (or uniformly much paler in color), it’s safe to assume that it’s dyed. So, too, with cabochons: Simple break a little piece off one edge to see whether the surface color (and the uniform quality of that color) is the same all the way through the cab. If it is, it’s likely the actual, natural color; if it’s not, particularly if the surface is a much deeper, brighter, more intense shade, then it’s dyed. However, with the newer high-pressure methods of stabilization, any added dye can be injected more deeply into the stone, making it harder to tell with the naked eye. Keeping that naked eye thoroughly jaundiced is often the best safeguard: As I said earlier, if it looks to good to be true, it probably is — particularly if it’s being sold an attractive price point. There was a time when I had some pieces of spectacularly bad treated and dyed turquoise; they belonged to my sister, who somehow managed to convince herself that she’d just happened upon an unusually good deal and spent far too much money on them. In terms of value, they might as well be the cheap blue plastic they feel like.
RECONSTITUTED
There is one final common form of alteration common to the turquoise market: It’s called reconstituted turquoise. Actual reconstituted turquoise is turquoise, but it’s also both something more and something less than that. Some refer to it al “chalk turquoise,” and in some cases, this is accurate. But chalk turquoise need not be reconstituted, a term that refers to the process, not the substance.
We’ve talked about the process of reconstituting stone before — specifically, with apple coral. It’s a process often used with rare stones or stone-like materials, in order to salvage even the tiniest bits for use. Cutting and cabbing a stone, of course, requires removing bits and pieces of the stone in order to shape it. These pieces, which range from sizeable fragments of solid stone to nothing more than dust, are sometimes called “chalk” by some in the business. This detritus is often rescued, combined together in a mold, and treated with heat and/or chemicals — reconstituted to create solid blocks that, once hardened, can likewise be cut and cabbed. Sometimes this detritus is placed into molds in particular sizes and shapes, creating instant cabs, nuggets, or beads that can be used as-is; sometimes, it’s used to form blocks of substantial size that are then cut and shaped to order.
Let’s be clear: This is turquoise — or at least, it was. For reconstituted turquoise that has been treated solely with heat, it’s altered, yes, but not precisely synthetic. But for that treated with chemicals and/or plastics, whether alone or in combination with heat, it becomes altered virtually entirely beyond its natural state. Like stabilized turquoise, it becomes something largely artificial.
When you get to this level of alteration, labeling becomes especially important. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of confusion surrounding the terms used. I’ve mentioned “chalk turquoise,” which is how some people refer to reconstituted turquoise. Personally, I find this to be a misnomer, for two reasons. First, there is a natural form of turquoise that is known as “chalk turquoise,” wholly because of its consistency. It’s very low-grade material, fragile, generally pale, easily dissolved or disintegrated. Nonetheless, it is real turquoise, exactly as it’s extracted from the ground (and as existing veins and deposits are increasingly exhausted, much of what is mined these days does fall into this category). It’s true that in its existing form, it’s useless for gem work, requiring significant stabilization or even destruction and reconstitution, but the “chalk” is the substance, not the process. This leads directly to my second reason for objecting to the term when talking about reconstituted turquoise: “Chalk” is not a process. The reconstituting is the process. It may seem a small point, but it goes directly to identity.
It also feeds another problem: that of passing off “lab-created” synthetics as “reconstituted turquoise.” This seems to be an increasing problem, probably because of the variability in use of the label. Entirely plastic “stones” that were created wholly in a manufacturing plant, that contain nothing natural and have no acquaintance with the earth whatsoever, are sometimes sold as “reconstituted turquoise,” on the apparent assumption that the term provides cover and some sort of air of legitimacy for all manner of fakery. [Worse, of course, is the habit of passing off pieces of blue plastic as genuine natural turquoise, but that’s still a bit more difficult to pull off.]
There are reputable dealers who deal in this sort of processed stone. The folks at Kingman are one example. But the key is that they identify it for what it is — and they price it accordingly. As always, if it’s too good to be true . . . .
A WORD ABOUT OUTRIGHT FAKES
Unfortunately, turquoise “treatments” have given rise to wholesale fakery. It manifests largely in two forms: 1) outright synthetics that contain no natural stone whatsoever; and 2) actual natural stones of another type that are treated and then passed off as the much more valuable turquoise.
We’ve already discussed the first in the preceding section. Wholly synthetic stones are just that: what used to be called “paste” or “costume jewelry,” they’re merely imitations composed entirely of chemicals and plastic. If you puncture one of these with a hot needle, it doesn’t matter where on the stone you touch it; the smell of burning plastic will be a dead giveaway. And while it is true that there are plenty of commercial dealers in mass-produced artificial “stones” in both cabochon and bead form, generally speaking, they’re too cheap and look too fake to be mistaken for the real thing, at least if the buyer is being honest with him- or herself.
A bigger problem arises with cheap, low-grade natural stones that are treated and dyed to look like turquoise, and then are passed off as the more valuable gemstone. We’ve talked about a couple of these pretenders already: magnesite and howlite.
Generally speaking, magnesite is the more valuable of the two when sold under its own identity. It manifests in a broader variety of forms, including White Buffalo and Wild Horse, both of which we covered here last week. Both of these are beautiful stones in their own right, although they are not turquoise. But lower-grade magnesite is often ivory, off-white, or gray-white in color, sometimes with a webbed or blocky matrix, sometimes with virtually none. This lower-grade form of the stone takes dye easily, and is sometimes saturated with blue or green shades and then pawned off on unwary buyers as “turquoise.”
Even more insidious is howlite. As “gemstones” go, howlite is about as cheap as it gets, making it lucrative to invest in the dyeing process and then pass it off as something entirely different. It occurs in various shades of white, it often has a spiderwebbed matrix like that found in turquoise, and it’s porous enough to be dyed cheaply and easily. It’s not at all uncommon to find dealers on mass-produced stones selling howlite cabochons and beads dyed in all sorts of colors. The reputable ones declare it as such; the unscrupulous ones try to pass off the reds and pinks as coral, the blues and greens as turquoise.
Making matters worse is a certain collection of “New Age” faux-Pagan practices that have grown up around the subject of gemstones: crystals, power stones, whatever a given practitioner calls them. In addition to appropriating across the board from indigenous traditions and simply making up symbolic meanings and associations out of whole cloth, many of these practitioners have begun co-opting artificial forms of such gemstones as turquoise to give them legitimacy and “meaning.” So-called “blue howlite” is a perfect example.
There is no such thing as “blue howlite.” It most certainly is not a form of turquoise, as some New Age practitioners would have you believe.
“Blue howlite” is a fake, a fraud, an abomination.
Now, if all you want is a cheap stone dyed in a pretty shade of blue, fine. This might work for you. But be aware that, even if sold as howlite, it is dyed. And if you see turquoise being defined or explained parenthetically, or in the fine print, as “blue howlite,” run, do not walk, in the opposite direction as fast as possible. It is not possible to behave ethically and sell “blue howlite.” The same is true for so-called “spiritual practitioners”; if they’re advancing the idea of “blue howlite” having Native properties and/or being a form of turquoise, they’re frauds, too.
Posts like today’s are not exactly what I’d call fun to write. It requires too much debunking, too much disabusing people of things that are more pleasant to believe, to be fun. But they’re necessary to any well-rounded exploration of turquoise. We have two Tuesdays left in the year, and thus in this series, and so we’re going to turn our attention to more pleasant topics: informal valuation and how, as an ordinary buyer, to shop for turquoise Indian jewelry.
~ Aji
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.
