Turquoise – The Gemstone Of Folklore And Legend
Turquoise is one of the oldest gemstones discovered by mankind having been first discovered in Egypt nearly six thousand years. Over the centuries, a silver turquoise pendant has generally remained popular with the masses, although the demand for jewelry with this gemstone has risen and fallen based on the notoriously fickle fashion market! Today, turquoise is considered by most to be one of the most popular gems in the world of jewelry design. The blue and blue-green shades of this stone are very popular and versatile and as result, there are a myriad of jewelry designs available with turquoise as the focal stone of the piece. With all these designs available to shoppers, no single genre has more fans than silver turquoise jewelry from the American Southwest. The talent of these artists and the beauty of their creations have become legendary the world over!
For the technical fans amongst us, here is some geological, physical, and chemical background about this stone. The first steps in the development of turquoise started several million years ago when groundwater and rainwater dissolved phosphatic salts of aluminum and copper and precipitated them within the parent bedrock formation. Under the actions of geologic load in a high temperature environment, the salts hardened. The blue color is due to its copper content, and the dark dendritic pattern is the remains of the bedrock where the turquoise was formed. Turquoise has a hardness rating of between 5 and 6 and is thus moderately hard. The stone has a somewhat dull and waxy luster. The blue color of the stone makes
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