For those of you who understand the gemological differences of various stones, today’s post will probably be more comprehensible to you than it is to me. Because today, we’re going to look at the turquoise pretenders: the stones that are frequently misidentified, accidentally or intentionally, as turquoise, and the differences often come down to minute subtleties in chemical structure.
The chemical composition of turquoise is written as CuAl6(PO4)4(OH)8•4(H2O). Translated into more or less plain English, it’s a stone composed of specific ratios of copper, aluminum, phosphorus, oxygen, and hydrogen. It is, however, a part of a class, or family, of minerals that often include other stones that are regularly mistaken for turquoise.
In the larger scheme of things, it’s not an especially big deal, I suppose, to find that a stone you thought was turquoise is actually variscite, or even howlite. From a superficial standpoint, the question becomes: Do you like the stone? Do you like the piece in which it sits? If the answer to both of these questions is yes, and if you have not invested a turquoise-priced sum of money in the piece, then it all comes down to whether the piece makes you happy. If it does, then you have a piece of jewelry containing a lovely, perhaps even stunningly beautiful stone, and what anyone else thinks of its chemical composition should be irrelevant.
If.
But the turquoise jewelry market is very specific, and the people who buy within it are generally doing so precisely because they want turquoise. Nowhere is this more true than in the Indian jewelry market, where the Skystone holds iconic status. More, turquoise is, as we have seen over the past few months, frequently extraordinarily valuable (and therefore extraordinarily expensive), particularly with regard to stone from certain mines. It’s one thing to pay $200 a carat for genuine Lander Blue turquoise; it’s quite another to find that you’ve paid it for dyed howlite that was worth only a few cents a carat in its natural state (and dyed is worth less than that).
And so it is incumbent upon not merely artists, but also dealers in loose stones, to identify their products with as much accuracy as possible. Now, honest mistakes occur. This is simply a fact of life, and it’s also understandable. We don’t have the facility to test stones ourselves, nor the financial ability to command it elsewhere. And so we are forced to rely upon the reputations and representations of those from whom we buy — coupled with our own combined stores of knowledge and experience. Over the years, we have no doubt made mistakes (I know of at least a couple of instances where such “mistakes” were most emphatically in the customer’s favor, where we sold something as a much lower-priced form of turquoise than it actually was, because at the time, we didn’t know what we had). But we do our best to determine, as closely as we can, what each stone is, turquoise or otherwise, and when we can’t be sure, we say so.
Not everyone does likewise.
There are numerous dealers in mass-produced beads and cabochons who identify their product as turquoise when it’s not, or it just barely is: in other words, when it’s chemically treated beyond all recognition. At this point, it’s no longer a natural stone, but a hybrid of stone and synthetic polymers and plastics. To call it “turquoise” in any way that intimates that it’s the actual natural stone is a travesty. But it’s common. There are dealers who are honest about this, such as the family who owns the Kingman mine; rather than waste the low-grade chalk turquoise and the dust and detritus from cutting and cabbing the better-quality stone, they save it, treat it, and form it into inexpensive mass-produced beads and cabochons. Nothing goes to waste; what results is a beautiful blue or green “stone” that is hard enough and stable enough for use in jewelry; and it provides a cost-effective alternative for those who want the look of turquoise but can’t afford the cost of the natural stone.
Unfortunately, with the rise of such infomercial-type sellers as QVC and the flooding of the market with cheap imports, dyed, treated, and stabilized turquoise (and “turquoise”) have become ubiquitous. They’ve also distorted the public’s perception of what turquoise should look and feel like, and what it’s capable of withstanding. I have absolutely no use for this approach, and will never, ever recommend a purchase from any such outlet under any circumstances, even with full disclosure.
I also have no use for those who willfully mislead, such as those who identify what is clearly magnesite as a particularly rare and expensive form of turquoise. We’ve talked about this sort of unscrupulousness before; I’mreferring here not to those who make honest mistakes, but rather, those who intentionally (or even negligently) mislabel variscite, magnesite, howlite, or any of another of other pretenders as turquoise. There are such dealers out there, and the Internet has made it possible for them to reach more customers. Know what you’re looking at before you buy.
Today, we’re going to cover what I’ve been loosely calling the pretenders. More accurately, some are pretenders, some are outright impostors, some are mimics, and some have multiple identities that allow them actually to straddle the line between “turquoise” and “not-turquoise.” We begin with those in the last category.
CHALCOSIDERITE
Chalcosiderite is the name sometimes given to the class, or family, of minerals that includes turquoise. Besides being an “umbrella” label, however, it is also the name of an independent mineral in its own right — one that includes not only copper but iron. In mineralogical syntax, it’s expressed as follows:CuFe+++6(PO4)4(OH)8•4(H2O). Unlike plain turquoise, however, it is sometimes translucent.
In one sense, then, all turquoise is chalcosiderite . . . but not all chalcosiderite is turquoise. The mineral of the same name is its own form of mineral. You will, however, see some dealer and “experts” use the words interchangeably. If you see a stone labeled accordingly and are unsure, insist that it be tested.
FAUSTITE
Faustite is often defined as a form of turquoise, or perhaps more to the point, certain types of turquoise are sometimes labeled faustite. It’s usually an electric green stone, its color attributable to its high zinc content. Its chemical composition differs from that of turquoise insofar as zinc is present, but other than that, it’s virtually identical: (Zn,Cu)Al6(PO4)4(OH)8•4(H2O).
I tend to think of it in terms that require a bit more complexity of expression, because the stones that get tagged as faustite are indeed turquoise. Perhaps a better way of labeling it would be along the lines of “turquoise, faustite variant.” We’ve looked at types of turquoise that fall into the “faustite” subcategory before, when we explored the Nevada greens. Carico Lake turquoise is often of this variant, manifesting in a brilliant lime green color, but perhaps the most intense, archetypal form is Orvil Jack, which ranges from electric shades of emerald to chartreuse.
CHRYSOCOLLA
Chrysocolla is another mineral that is frequently mistaken for turquoise because of its trademark light blue color with a hint of green. But whereas turquoise occurs secondarily to copper, chrysocolla occurs secondarily to turquoise (or to some other mineral).Chrysocolla might thus be said to be “relative” of turquoise, since it co-occurs with it. Its structure is very similar, but includes silicon, and in written form appears as follows: (Cu,Al)2H2Si2O5(OH)4•n(H2O).
Chrysocolla is actually a beautiful stone. It often appears with webbed, blocky, or swirling matrices in a variety of colors and shades, some of them stunning. It tends to be more valuable in its own right than are many other stones that are mere mimics or impostors. Some chrysocolla looks very much like good Arizona turquoise from mines like Kingman or Sleeping Beauty, clear, hard, and robin’s-egg or sky blue with mysteriously wispy white inclusions, or sometimes with blended patches of green. Some of the most spectacular, however, has been given its own subsidiary name, Sonoran Sunrise.
Sonoran Sunrise
Sonoran Sunrise is a specific form of chrysocolla that often resembles turquoise, because it appears in a classic opaque robin’s-egg blue shade, with a blocky, webbed, or swirled matrix. The matrix, however, is what makes its true identity clear, manifesting in shades of peach and charcoal black. Occasionally, a Sonoran Sunrise cabochon will have been cut in such a way that none of the peach color appears; the blue stone with the black matrix resembles turquoise more closely yet.
It is the colors that give rise to the stone’s name: streaks of night’s gray-black blended with the pale coral shades of dawn, parting to reveal the clear blue of the daylit sky in the Sonora regions of the Northern Mexico desert, all in one stone. Such cabochons tend to run in the range of $1 or so per carat, but because they are often available in substantial size, the stone’s final cost may be anywhere from $40 to $100. If you’re looking for a stone that has something of the appearance of turquoise, but it actually being turquoise is not a requirement for you, this is one to consider. It’s fabulous.
VARISCITE
Variscite is fairly regularly misidentified and mislabeled as turquoise; it’s not. It is indeed sometimes very similar in appearance, but it is frequently paler and virtually always more translucent in appearance, and it lacks copper content: AlPO4•2(H2O).
The stone that sits in the left foreground of the photo at the top of this post, pale white with the smudged-looking spidery blue matrix, is believed to be variscite, most likely from the so-called “New Lander” variscite mine. I’m discomfited by the name, as it capitalizes on the reputation of Lander ( a/k/a Lander Blue) turquoise, the world’s most valuable, by attempted association. I wonder how many people have unwittingly bought “New Lander” variscite thinking that they were getting the same thing as Lander turquoise. But the name is now well-established, and so people simply need to be aware. Also, it’s an object lesson on the subject of greed: If something seems to good to be true, it generally is, and that’s as true with gemstones as with anything else in life.
But back to the stone itself: As noted above, variscite is often pale, but it also manifests in more intense shades. That from the Broken Arrow mine appears in a brilliant emerald green. More commonly, though, it tends toward pale blue to off-white colors, often with translucent overlays of rather bronze-y color. Matrices tend to range from bronze to brown to black to an inky bluish shade, and the lines often appear much like fine spiderwebbed traceries of actual ink: As in the stone in the photo at the top of this, the color of the matrix lines often “bleeds” into the stone, creating feathery patterns similar to that of ink lines bleeding into parchment.
A word of warning: Be wary of “new” mines that tout their product as turquoise (often accompanied by such hyperbolic adjectives as “top-grade,” “exceptionally fine,” or “the best we’ve ever seen”) when the stone has this appearance. I know of a few such mines that promote their product accordingly but who I personally believe to be selling variscite. My conclusion is based on every image of every stone I’ve ever seen with the corresponding mine labels; not one has ever appeared to me to be turquoise, but every one of them looks exactly like variscite, with all of the usual hallmarks of that stone’s appearance. I’m not going to name names; I’m simply going to caution our own clients and friends to scrutinize such claims carefully if they’re ever faced with such a situation. You will also not find us using those products; to do so, even with the stones properly labeled by us, would simply serve to finance their current practices.
CALCITE
Calcite is a crystalline mineral that usual appears in translucent forms, such as certain types of beryl or quartz. It may be clear and colorless, or tinted like colored glass in varying hues. Occasionally, however, the color will be dense enough to make it appear more opaque, at least to the naked eye. Its mineralogical composition is exceedingly simple: CaCO3.
For the most, calcite doesn’t appear among the turquoise pretenders . . .with one very notable exception. It’s something called rainbow calsilica.
Rainbow Calsilica
Whether rainbow calsilica even qualifies as a “stone” in the generally accepted sense of the word is up for debate. Some experts insist that it is not a natural stone at all, but rather, a man-made composite of thin, tight layers of variously-colored (and often variously-dyed) ground stone substances. Others are just as adamant that it is indeed a naturally-occurring mineral, one found only in Mexico. As usual, my take falls between the two extremes. It doesn’t actually look anything like turquoise to the even marginally-trained eye. although it often appears with striations in brilliant shades of greenish-blue that look like what’s found in ribbon turquoise, and it is probably this association, coupled with the fact that the other layers tend to manifest in warm, stereotypically “Southwestern” colors, that makes it marketable to the unwary as “turquoise.”
We don’t have any rainbow calsilica on hand, nor do I have any photos. You can see a wide array of rough and cabochons with that label here. Some “experts” call it “fordite,” borrowing a name for something that actually has nothing to do with gemstones at all; it’s the name given to the accumulated multi-colored layers of enamel found in automobile manufacturing plants (i.e., splashed and pooled onto floors and other surfaces over time), hence the “ford” (or, rather, “Ford”) of the name. The enamel layers hardened into a substance that someone, somewhere, once scraped off; struck by the beauty of the combined layers of colorful paint, some enterprising individual (whether the person who first noticed it or someone else) turned it into a lapidary material for creating faux-stone jewelry cabochons. Some experts speculate that rainbow calsilica, particularly that with the greatest variety of color in the most vivid shades, is actually nothing more than fordite. Others use the name metaphorically, believing that the layers in rainbow calsilica, while created artificially, are actually compressed rows of dyed crushed sedimentary rock.
The skeptic’s view is the widely accepted one, but there are those with similar credentials who believe that rainbow calsilica is the real deal: a naturally-occurring stone composed of multiple tightly compressed sedimentary layers of assorted minerals, accounting for the brilliant color striations. According to these individuals, the stone comes from only one region of the world: the state of Chihuahua, in Northern Mexico (the state that abuts the U.S. border at New Mexico).
My take? I think it’s a little of both. If you look at the Google Images link above, you’ll see a wide diversity of color combinations. My best guess is that some of the more muted, earthy-toned rough pieces are indeed genuine natural stone, and it is probably this that comes from Northern Mexico. It is not, after all, unusually to find ancient sedimentary rock in colorful layers in this part of the world.
However, once you start getting into the truly electric colors and combinations thereof, polished to an incredibly high gloss? Much less likely to be naturally-occurring. So what is it? Some of it no doubt is genuine fordite: layers of enamel paint, compressed and hardened. Some if is more likely bits of actual stone, although who knows what the original color and chemical composition were, that have been ground into dust, dyed in brilliant hues, layered on top of each other, and heat-treated to meld them into s single “stone” suitable for cutting and cabbing. Generally speaking, there’s usually one way to find out: Have it mineralogically tested by a reputable gemologist, geologist, or chemist to determine its chemical composition.
JASPER
Jasper is a form of chalcedony, a member of the quartz family of minerals. It sometimes resembles a variety of other stones, such as some agates, and appears in a dizzying, dazzling array of colors and patterns. Some of those colors include varying shades along the blue-to-green spectrum, and sometimes the patterns resemble the sort of matrices found in turquoise. More often, though, certain types of African jasper (as discussed here last week), particularly those in mottled shades of olive green , brown, and golden shades, are mislabeled “turquoise.” Jasper itself has a simple mineralogical composition: SiO2.
Now, as I said last week, I personally believe that African turquoise does exist: geological and climate conditions in parts of the continent are perfect for its formation, and it has a long and storied history in the art of many African cultures, to a degree that I believe is unlikely to explained away as solely the product of trade. With that said, what is mostly being marketed today as “African turquoise” is most definitively jasper, but its dealers are attempting to capitalize on the more lucrative market for the Skystone. They (and I refer here to dealers worldwide, including in the U.S.) “justify” their mislabeling by calling it “trade name,” not a “stone name.” but (as I also said last week), that’s just so much hooey.
Much of what is labeled “African turquoise” tends to be jasper in specific colors: occasionally blues, but more often greens, yellows, browns, grays. Much of it looks very much like leopardskin jasper, which you can see in the beads on this necklace. Ocean jasper, with mottled circular patterns, and picture jasper, which looks much like desert or other landscape images, are also popular variants mislabeled as turquoise. You can see an example of picture jasper in shades of brown and red here.
There is also another form of jasper, called Bloodstone, that is sometimes mislabeled as turquoise. It’s a dark green form of jasper, usually the color of jade, but opaque rather than translucent. Sometimes it’s a darker green, like the color of a raw emerald. And once in a great while, it’s so dark that it goes beyond teal to nearly blue in certain lights, like the large cabochon in the necklace shown above. In that particular case, the color was such a deep teal that it took careful examination to identify the stone at all. It clearly was not turquoise, of course, but it was not quite black enough to be either onyx or jet, either. Held to the light, some minute translucence appeared around the edges of the cabochon, and it became clear that it was actually a teal color, closer to the navy blue than the emerald green end of that spectrum.
It also bore the telltale red inclusions that give the stone its name, if in very small wisps. The name comes from the early Christian Church, perhaps during the days of the Roman Empire, but certainly by the time of the Crusades, when European invaders wore it as a protective talisman. Because of its deep green color shot through with lines and and patches and droplets of brick red, someone decided that it looked like the drops of Christ’s blood, fallen to the green grass covering the earth below the cross at Golgotha, and named it the Bloodstone. It became a stone sacred to some members of the Church, and was still worn as symbol of Christ’s supposed protection throughout the Middle Ages. For indigenous cultures on this side of the world, it has no such associations, but it remains a beautiful stone that can be found occasionally in Indian jewelry.
MAGNESITE
Magnesite is a popular stone for Indian jewelry, in part because like jasper, it appears in beautiful, bold patterns, but is far less expensive for both artisan and buyer alike. Generally speaking, it appears in shades of white and off-white, with big, arresting matrices in intense shades of black and brown. There are a couple of variants, which we will cover here, but its chemical composition is fairly simple: MgCO3, or, in English, magnesium, carbon, and oxygen.
White Buffalo
We have talked about magnesite on a few occasions already; it’s impossible to discuss Sacred White Buffalo turquoise without mentioning its chief impostor. There is, as I said then, an actual Sacred White Buffalo turquoise. Most of what is sold as such on the market is not it. It’s not even turquoise.
Magnesite contains no copper, no iron, no aluminum, no zinc — none of the major minerals found in turquoise. It’s a white stone, or, rather, whitish; some of it is virtually the color of snow, while much of it is more off-white, ivory, or even a very pale beige in color. It sometimes appears with virtually no matrix whatsoever, but most of it does have inclusions; generally speaking, however, they are the sort of inclusions that make it readily identifiable, and it’s usually a good way to tell that it’s not turquoise. The matrices range in color from a golden-bronze shade to brown, and from silvery-gray to charcoal to black. The form that appears with matrices in the black shades is the kind most likely to be labeled “White Buffalo.”
Don’t get me wrong; much turquoise has the sort of matrix that manifests in flecks or blocks or swatches rather than fine spiderwebbing. But the difference here is that actual Sacred White Buffalo turquoise has a webbed matrix; White Buffalo magnesite has only blocky or flecked matrices. Personally, we also distinguish between the two by the name. The turquoise is a sacred stone of sorts, and thus gets the full name when discussing it. It seems disrespectful to add the word “sacred” to the name of the pretender, so we refer to it only as “White Buffalo magnesite,” being careful to add that final identifier to make clear what it actually is. We were disgusted to learn that an otherwise seemingly reputable dealer from whom Wings had bought for years was selling the magnesite out of a tray labeled “White Buffalo Turq.” When questioned, they admitted that it was magnesite, and indeed were not knowledgeable enough to know of the existence of (or difference in) the actual turquoise, but without asking, no one would know.
Wild Horse
There is another form of magnesite popular in Indian jewelry, one that tends to manifest with matrices in the brown spectrum. With Wild Horse, the matrices are often far bigger inclusions that mere flecks. Sometimes the blocks of color resembles mesas and canyons, and can be mistaken for picture jasper because of their desert-landscape effect. The actual matrix colors range from golden shades through bronze to copper and brick red all the way to deep, rich browns.
You will frequently see Wild Horse misidentified as “Crazy Horse,” yet another example of the dominant culture’s continual quest to appropriate the most sacred and significant icons of Native cultures. There is no such stone as “Crazy Horse.” Period. The use of it is disrespectful in the extreme; that’s a name that belongs solely to the great warrior’s own people, and specifically, to his blood descendants. In situations like this, it’s important to get the name right, and the name is “Wild Horse.” If you see it mislabeled accordingly, you should correct the seller. They won’t thank you, but it’s a point that needs to be made (sadly, again and again and again and again).
HOWLITE
We end today with howlite. Howlite is a deceptively simple-looking stone: a very inexpensive (even cheap) substance, but one with a more complex chemical composition than one would expect looking at it. In mineralogical syntax, it’s written as follows: Ca2B5SiO9(OH)5. Translated into lay language, its composed of calcium, silicon, boron, hydrogen, and oxygen.
We’ve talked about howlite before; it’s one of the most common stone out there used to create fake turquoise. And as turquoise it is fake. But to be clear, howlite is a real stone, it’s simply a very, very inexpensive one. These days, its greatest value seems to exist in its utility as a fake version of more valuable stones — a value that exists mostly for disreputable dealers, of course.
The things about howlite is that it takes dye easily. In its natural state, it’s a whitish stone, often with a grayish matrix that looks very much like the sort of spiderwebbing found in turquoise. But howlite is absorbent, and can easily be turned into a faux version of nearly any opaque matrixed gemstone you can envision. To the trained eye, of course, it often looks artificial; we can usually identify dyed howlite (or dyed chalk) on the spot and winnow it out from actual turquoise. But to the average buyer, turquoise’s main identifier is color (perhaps followed secondarily by the presence of matrix), and so it can easily mislead those who have no reason to know there’s a need to investigate further.
Howlite is often used in large commercial operations to create beads, nuggets, and cabochons in mass quantities. Much of this occurs overseas, in places like China, where the stones are dyed and cut to be shipped to distributors. But it does occur here, too, and regardless, it’s the dealers who sell the end product who have the ultimate responsibility to be honest with their customers about what they’re getting. And this is where the danger of dealers like QVC come in: They have conditioned a whole generation of potential buyers to believe that turquoise comes in that brilliant, clear, dark blue color and glossy, plasticky finish, and so people think of dyed, treated, or even wholly synthetic “stones” are the genuine article. When such garbage is being passed off as an expensive gemstone, how can the average customer be expected to know that what truly is an actual stone is dyed to pass it off as some other (much more expensive) stone?
The average customer can’t.
But here’s one tip (we’ll get into more next week when we look at synthetic treatments of real turquoise): Break it apart. If it’s a strand of beads, separate on them strand, a few millimeters apart, so that you can see the holed center of the beads themselves. Are they white? Or, if you’re breaking apart a cabochon or nugget, is the middle of it white? Does the color extend only just below the surface? If so, you’ve got a cheap dyed stone, and chances are, it’s howlite. Some processors, of course, take greater pains to cover their tracks and dye the stone more deeply, but the color usually fades as it gets toward the center, at least somewhat. Real turquoise, once broken apart, will be turquoise all the way through (or you may run up against a bit of host rock, but it won’t be a gradient that turns into solid white).
Oh, and just for the record: All those New age-y types who impute all sorts of faux Native symbolism and powers to various stones? If they include dyed howlite in that, immediately disregard everything else they have to say. They’re certainly liars when it comes to anything regarding Native symbolism.
Next week: How natural turquoise is destroyed (i.e., synthetic and chemical treatments).
~ 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.
