Turquoise

There's so much of it in Santa Fe.

I absolutely love turquoise jewelry and art. Love the colors, love the heft and weight and complexity of the stones, and I thought I died and went to heaven when we first got here. So much turquoise.

But there's simply too much of it and I quickly became overwhelmed. I want to support the pueblos and the Indian artisans who make a living selling their beautiful work in Santa Fe, and I have bought pieces on occasion. But there is simply so much of it on offer that after a while I didn't want to see any more. While each piece is made by hand and crafted individually, the styles are similar and it all begins to look alike.

Native jewelry makers are held to standards that mandate where the stones are mined -- no Chinese or Turkish imports are allowed, and no manufactured stones where resins are used to bind turquoise fragments or "enhance" them with stabilizers or wax. The jewelry they sell has to be mined in the US.

Without stabilizers or chemical enhancements, natural turquoise remains somewhat porous and jewelry will darken over time with the wearer's oils and natural dirt. Darkening with age is considered an asset -- a patina of real turquoise.

There is a whole science to the quality and grading of stones, involving how much occlusion from the matrix rock runs through the stone, and rating the hardness and luster. It gets pretty complex, especially with such variation of colors and chemistry and mixes of other elements.

The area around Santa Fe used to have robust mining operations just south of our neighborhood in the Cerrillos hills. There is iron content in turquoise from Cerrillos so it is more green than sky blue -- it surprised me how many different colors of "turquoise" there are, depending on the mineral content mixes.

I think there is only one Cerrillos mine left. The turquoise most Native jewelers are using is from Arizona and Nevada now. When you buy from a pueblo vendor, they will tell you where the turquoise came from.

I want to support the artisans, and I want to own some beautiful pieces. I'd like to give locally made jewelry as gifts and I just like looking at the startling blue of a sky colored stone. But I really do get swamped when I go shopping. Between the extravagant excesses of store displays, the tons of local artists at the plaza, the gift shops in every museum, the sellers at national parks and pueblo visitor sites and even roadside vendors, I can't begin to discern what I want or who to buy from.

I have a few pieces I love -- vintage turquoise button covers from Becky, a teal green turquoise pendant with coppery occlusions that Tom gave me, a second hand watch with turquoise insets, and a sky blue pair of earrings I bought at Taos Pueblo from a very interesting Taos man who told me the stones came from Utah.

I chuckle at the women around town draped in heavy squash blossom necklaces and turquoise studded concha belts and bracelets up the arms ala Millicent Rogers. Not for me, and bordering on Native dress expropriation, but still fun to ogle. The women I see look like these models . . . only, um, older.

But when you see it around town all the time and when every store and shop and stall and boutique and vendor and market sells so much of it and when it's just everywhere, it really is too much.

I do still love pretty turquoise, though.