TURQUOISE

An opaque stone, formed by sedimentation, it has a very variable chemical makeup and ranges in colour from blue to green. It is also usually found with black limonite running through it in veins. (known as a matrix) It has such varied appearance it is often possible to tell where in the world it was mined. It was used in the early part of the 20th Century by American Indians, but is also found in Nepal, Iran and China. 

As turquoise has become harder to find of a quality good enough to use in jewellery, it has been more often dyed to enhance its colour, or worse, bonded with coloured resin to made it tough enough to cut. (poor quality turquoise can be crumbly). Further down the scale of despicable things done to it to make it saleable, all the powder and small chips produced in the cutting of a stone can be reconstituted with resin to form a sort of turquoise paste that is often used for "inlay" work, instead of individually cut pieces.

At the bottom of the heap and completely unacceptable in our opinion, are actual fakes. These are sometimes other stones such as Howlite dyed to look like turquoise and sold as the real thing, or manmade plastic or glass based fakes. The worst offenders are often used in "power" or "Budda" bracelets, where claims are made for the healing or psychological benefits conferred by the cheap plastic "turquoise". Not all of these bracelets are made of fake stones, but we object strongly to those that are, and we urge you to complain if you see fakes passed off as real. It makes it hard to sell the real thing at reasonable prices. Byezantium has turquoise jewellery of very good quality, but we have to say that a small proportion of it has been dyed. It is however, all real turquoise.

In the shop we have silver and Turquoise:

bracelets - earrings - necklaces -

in gold and Turquoise: earrings - necklaces - rings -

Please click to the left to see them