Since 200 B.C., turquoise has been used by southwest American Indian tribes to make the Turquoise Bead Necklace. Turquoise stones have been used in ceremonies, religion, trade, art, treaty negotiations, and jewelry, for example, the turquoise bead necklace.
Today in the United States, turquoise jewelry is still being made by Zuni, Navajo, Hopi, and Santo Domingo as well as other tribes in the Southwest. The mineral deposit, turquoise, is considered to mean good fortune, and it's the stone of life. It’s also revered as a symbol of wealth by our Native American Indians and other cultures of the world. Native American Indian jewelry is created with turquoise set in silver or gold, beaded, set as cabochons, cut into finer pieces, carved into fetishes, or hand-inlaid into the piece.
The various color forms of turquoise are attributed to the metals in the ground that surround it. Blue turquoise suggests the presence of copper and green turquoise forms where iron is present. The mother rock or host rock is matrix. It can be made from several different elements such as quartz, chert, pyrite, cuperite, and manganese oxide. Spider web turquoise is made up of small nuggets that are naturally cemented together with matrix or rock, and when the stone is cut and polished it resembles a spider web. Different turquoise mines produce varying colors and matrixes.
|
