NOTES ON TURQUOISE

NOTES ON
TURQUOISE
by David L. Neumann
In these notes our attention is directed to the lapidary significance of turquoise and in particular to Southwest Indian jewelry
making.
Turquoise has not always enjoyed its present popularity in the
western world as a semiprecious stone.
It is used principally in jewelry, and jewels come and go with
styles in dress and ornament, except among primitive groups
which employ the same ornaments through long periods because
only those gems and materials locally obtainable are readily
available.
To place turquoise in some perspective with respect to its human
history and significance it is instructive to turn to the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1937 where only a few paragraphs are given to
this gem. The same edition devotes pages to jade.
This is not intended to belittle the interest in turquoise nor to
diminish its significance to our Southwestern Indians, but simply
to remind ourselves that the present interest in this mineral has
not always pertained. Indeed the period from 1900 until very
recently found turquoise out of vogue in the big world. Not for
fifty years was turquoise in demand and in this country never before has it been of so great interest nationwide as it is today.
El Palacio in 1952 (Vol. 59, No. 10) printed a brief extract,
which I had prepared, of certain portions of Pogue's 1915 classic
work on turquoise* (probably the most complete, careful, and
authoritative article in English on the subject).
The time elapsed (57 years before Pogue's major book on turquoise was reissued), is indicative of the period during which the
stone was of little moment to the world.
Today, for the first time in many years, turquoise is again in
vogue. The Christmas season of 1972, for the first time ever, witnessed newspaper advertising, from New York (Saks Fifth Avenue)
through Chicago (Marshall Field) to Los Angeles (May Company)
of turquoise set in Indian-made jewelry.
True, the Southwest Indian had never lost his interest in turquoise, but the large national market for jewelry had long neglected this gem.
To illustrate this point, one day in conversation "Doc" Wilson
who for many years operated under the name American Gem
*Republished by the Rio Grande Press, Inc., 1972-Glorieta,
New Mexico.
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Company, told me the story of his first finding a market for the
good turquoise he had found in the later famous and today still
productive Lone Mountain mine near Tonopah, Nevada.
Wilson told me that he had been to New York in 1928, marketing certain gems other than turquoise. On returning, having found
no interest in New York whatever in the stones from Lone Mountain, he stood idly looking into the street from the Alvarado Hotel
in Albuquerque when he noticed a curio store on the other side. He
went over to see if they might be interested in his turquoise and
found that they were. The store he had noticed was Maisel's, long
moved from that location and later a significant factor in nationally
marketing turquoise-set silver jewelry of Indian motifs. This was
the beginning of an active market for Lone Mountain stones. Later
this material, which occurs principally in small disseminated granules, became a favorite of the Zuni lapidaries. One reason for this
was that it is less friable than most, and as the Zunis characteristically cut very small stones, often narrow and pointed at each
end (called needle point in the trade) a more brittle turquoise resulted in considerable losses in cutting.
The use of turquoise in the American Southwest, initially, and
up to very recent times, employed no metal for mountings. Discoidal beads were strung and worn as necklaces; mosaics cemented
to wood backgrounds served, with a bit of string through a hole
and through the ear, as earrings; or turquoise was inlaid as eyes for
fetishes or used as mosaic on shells worn about the neck.
The use of silver as a mounting for stones, including turquoise,
dates no earlier than circa 1890. For example, Pogue's authoritative
and exhaustive treatise which covers the subject of turquoise worldwide, among all illustrations used shows but a single piece from
the Southwest mounted in silver, a simple ring with one stone.
Turquoise is set, except in the Southwest, in gold. Because
yellow gold forms a quite different background for blue stones
than does pale silver, light blue stones are favored for finer pieces,
stones often so pale that they are not wanted by workers in silver.
Much Persian turquoise, held at high prices, is pale, and though
hard and clear, when set in silver is ineffective; the shades are so
pale that they are not used in good jewelry where stones of stronger, deeper color are required.
A turquoise is not a diamond. This distinction is not made
frivolously. A diamond retains its inherent character through more
vicissitudes than most earthly things can survive. Turquoise is
easily destroyed by heat (mere sizzling grease will ruin it), by
fracture (it is quite brittle), and frequently by discoloration due
to varied causes, from oils to bleaching chemicals or even to exposure, when mined, to the air and sun.
The employment of turquoise for adornment, ceremonial use or
in any way whatever requires the skills and techniques of the miner
and the lapidary. The mineral, being brittle, must be handled with
care in mining, in breaking it out from the matrix in which it often
occurs, in cutting and polishing, and, for some users, in drilling.
Today strands of nuggets (or discoidal beads) are still among the
common pieces worked up by turquoise technicians.
Much rough stone reaches the Zunis and Santo Domingos. The
Zunis constitute the largest market for rough turquoise, the Nava-
a Turquoise from China -
collections O.T. Branson, Treasure Chest
b Tibetan turquoise necklace - collections O.T. Branson, Treasure Chest
c Dark Green turquoise earrings, Navajo, stone provenience unknown, collections Museum of New Mexico
d Zuni bracelet (predates 1939), stone provenience unknown, - collections
Museum of New Mexico
e Zuni dress ornament, turquoise from Steinich Mine, Lander County,
Nevada - collections Museum of New Mexico
f
Spiderweb turquoise earrings, stones from Caryco Mine, Kingman, Arizona - collection D.L. Neumann
g Cut green turquoise from Crow Springs, Mine, Tanopah, Nevada collection D.L. Neumann
h Cut blue turquoise from Blue Diamond Mine, Austin, Nevada - collection
D.L. Neumann
i Pin, Zuni, turquoise from Lone Mountain Mine, Tonopah, Nevada collection D.L. Neumann
j
Cut Persian turquoise, -
collections O.T. Branson, Treasure Chest
k Blue turquoise with dark matrix from Morenci Mine, Greenlee County,
Nevada - collection D.L. Neumann
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Above and facing page: various
r semiprecabochon shapes
cious laipidary work, rarely used
today for turquoise.
jos for cut and polished stones. Navajos are not lapidaries but
silversmiths, and purchase cut stones, usually from traders in
Gallup. It is in that city today that the principal market for Indian
jewelers materials is concentrated.
For the past four or five years turquoise cutters in the southwestern American area, with few exceptions, have declined to
cut cabochon, i.e., rounds, ovals, marquise. (They all cut baroque,
that is, free form.) Neither will they cut snake eyes (tiny rounds).
All such cuts, which require more care than free form cutting and
result in obtaining fewer carats from a given weight of rough material, are eschewed by our cutters. Such stones are, however,
available from Persia. They also may be had in coral, cut in Italy.
This accounts in some degree for the increasing use of coral in
Navajo jewelry. If jewelry designs call for pear shaped stones they
may be obtained, or square, or rectangular or oval, in Persian
turquoise or Italian coral, but not, today, in American turquoise.
The result has been a very recent but massive importation of cut
stones. Persian turquoise is and for centuries has been the world's
best. Very little American turquoise has ever been equal to the
Persian. Some stones from Godber's Dry Creek mine have been
very good, and a portion of the stones taken through the years
from the Villagrove mine near Saguache, Colorado, has been very
good indeed. (The Villagrove mine has been abandoned for several
years.) But the clarity and tone of color of the classic Persian
stone remains the finest available.
Other facts also have played a part in the recent importation of
stones from Persia. One of these is the rather sudden and extraordinary interest both in this country and abroad in American Indian
crafts, especially Navajo and Zuni jewelry; both tribes today use
more and more turquoise.
Recently a Mr. Roden Hogoubian of Los Angeles called on me.
He is an importer of Persian turquoise. We talked and dickered, the
dickering resulting in my purchasing 1000 carats of his best grade
of thick, dark blue cabochon cut stones, with dark matrix. The
price, in lots of 100 carats was $1.25 per carat.
As for the availability of turquoise, a feast or famine situation
has characterized its supply through many years in the American
Southwest.
Turquoise deposits, with few exceptions, are not massive, and
often productive mines return good earnings for a few months or
years and then -the deposits are depleted, the vein pinches out or
the pocket is exhausted. Years often pass during which a mine
lies unworked. Then, as has often occurred, a new owner buys or
leases the claim and reactivates the working.
The recently reproduced Pogue monograph has been brought up
to date by Rex Arrowsmith, who apparently simply reproduces a
startlingly long roster of mines, principally based on lists obtained
from the Bureau of Mines of the State of Nevada. This unedited
list headed "Mines and Prospects," is deceptive; the uncritical
reader necessarily receives the impression that it consists of claims
or workings which have produced marketable turquoise of gem
quality. This is erroneous, as many, really most, of the listings are
simply mineral claims filed by miners who believe from the surroun-
30
ding formation that turquoise may occur. Many, when and if
worked, will prove "dry holes" or if turquoise is found it will
prove to be low-grade oiling turquoise. This is turquoise of such
softness and poor quality that it can only be soaked in oil, to
heighten its color, and processed into cheaper articles.
Very few mines in the area have produced good gem grades of
turquoise steadily through long periods of years. During prehistoric (pre-Spanish) days in the Southwest mining methods were
primitive and tedious, resulting in the small quantities of gem
obtained by the wielders of stone hammers being highly valued. Of
recent decades the great open pit porphyry copper mines of
Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico have yielded large quantities as
an incident to copper production. Mining costs are negligible, since
Phelps Dodge and other great corporate copper producers have ripped off the overburden and exposed here and there in various pits,
seams of gem material. The price paid for the rough turquoise so
obtained is arranged by turquoise dealers with the copper producers. Mining equipment is designed to handle thousands of tons of
ore quickly and cheaply, the heavy machines employed in these
pits represent large capital, and the operators of this equipment are
well paid. Thus it is of little or no interest to mine superintendents
that, from time to time seams of turquoise may be exposed as
they have been recently at Morenci and Bisbee in Arizona. Such
rough turquoise may be worth fifty to one hundred dollars a
pound, tempting a shovel operator to climb down from his
machine and pocket a large quick profit, but be may be -- and in
cases has been -- discharged for so doing. Nevertheless the temptation is great and much turquoise has reached the market in this
manner.
The Morenci open pit has a contract with a turquoise dealer
now established in Gallup, New Mexico. The rough Morenci turquoise obtained is legally his and legitimately marketed. It is probable, however, that a larger quantity reaches cutters through
shovel operators who have scooped it up on the sly.
In 1967, the major mine at Bisbee uncovered good turquoise.
This material is characterized by a deep intense purplish blue color
with dark brown matrix. Supplies of Bisbee turquoise were
substantial for a few years, but have now ceased, and it is believed
that Phelps Dodge, the mine operator, is about to close down the
pit. Mining now is in other than Indian hands and turquoise miners
and cutters live, typically, in Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Ar-
K2>
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izona.
During the past decade there has been a striking change in the
affairs of turquoise miners and cutters. Most substantial turquoise
mines had until lately been operated by entrepreneurs who sold
their product both rough from the mine and in the form of cut
stones to others who were dealers in silver jewelry. The bulk of the
rough material went to the Zunis who, being skilled lapidaries, cut
their own stones.
Much of the chalk-soft (oiling) turquoise went in large quanties
to Idar-Oberstein in Germany. This was sold at low prices to the
technicians of that town who treated it, adding color, and often
cut it into spheres, the specialty of that town. Another outlet for
rough turquoise
today is a group of independent cutters living
oven
31
in various communities in the Southwest. Many cutting shops operate in Albuquerque, others in Nevada, Utah, Arizona and southern Colorado.
The change alluded to has come about as the result of the sharp
increase in the demand for and in the price of silver jewelry set
with turquoise. The bulk of this jewelry is Indian made-Zuni,
Navajo and Hopi, although the Hopi work to date employs little
turquoise. Other groups, Cochiti, San Juan, and San Ildefonso, do
some work also, but this is limited.
In order to effect a sale, turquoise cutters formerly would
accept finished jewelry in payment for cut stones. Today many
prefer such jewelry to cash, and can earn a substantial second
profit by distributing the jewelry. Several formerly leading miners
and cutters have become wholesale jewelers, notably the Zacherys
of Albuquerque, and the Godbers, formerly of Los Angeles and
now of Scottsdale, Arizona. The latter also have entered and ambitiously pursue the retail jewelry business.
A second and significant circumstance is the avarice of American turquoise miners who ask and obtain constantly higher prices
for rough turquoise.
Still another factor is the very unfortunate and today nearly
universal practice of heavily backing American turquoise with
epoxy glue. The justification for this somewhat fraudulent habit is
that the glue strengthens the stones and renders them less liable to
fracture. However, as these stones are sold by the carat it results in
jewelry makers buying epoxy glue by the carat. The only decent
aspect of this lamentable practice is that it has held down the price
of cut stones.
Because of the present extraordinary interest in and demand for
American Indian handicrafts, the price of Indian jewelry has been
rising and during the last three years has approximately tripled,
with many Zuni items having increased in price by a multiple of
four or even five. This has created substantial competition from
other than Indians, specifically a number of producers of channel
(inlaid) jewelry set in sterling silver frames which are centrifugally
cast by the lost wax method, rather than wrought. These procedures in the American Southwest constitute a substantial market for
rough turquoise and turn out well-constructed pieces using good
quality stones carefully cut and set. Only the better Zuni craftsmen equal in quality the channel pieces being produced by centrifugal casters and the price of Zuni pieces of the best workmanship
is several times that of the pieces produced by casting. So long as
there are buyers who prefer the natural to the synthetic, the hand
wrought to machine-made, there will always be a market for natural turquoise, set in the mountings of our Southwestern Indians.
32