Turquoise Sterling Silver Nugget Necklace

South West USA

This piece has been crafted with Turquoise sourced from the South West USA, with material from mines including Kingman and Sleeping Beauty. Family run today, the Kingman mine is one of three prehistoric turquoise mining sites in Arizona. The mine produces every colour of turquoise from blue to green, and varying volumes of matrix. Turquoise from the Sleeping Beauty mine in Arizona has a pure sky blue colour with generally very little veining or webbing. The mine closed in 2014, making the material remaining in circulation even more precious.

Turquoise

All of our turquoise is stabilised unless otherwise stated in the main listing (jewellery listed as Persian have NOT had any treatments). Stones that are naturally very soft or porous tend to be stabilised for jewellery. Modern methods of stabilisation involve injecting epoxy resin into the stone in a high pressure oven, which seals all the cracks and pores. It also stops the gem from changing over time - people who wear non-stabilised Turquoise often complain about their stone darkening and going green over time (this is due to natural body oils reacting with the minerals, causing the colour to change.) Some stabilised stones are chemically dyed at the same time, however colour enhancements are never made by Two Skies, which is in line with gem industry standards - you can be assured the colours displayed in our stones are 100% natural.

Sterling Silver

Why do silversmiths use 925%? Measured in parts per thousand, pure silver (999%) is too soft so silversmiths mix it with other metals to make it it harder. The purer the metal, the higher the polish, but it is a lot softer (thus less durable). The harder the metal is, the more hard wearing the jewellery is, but it will also tarnish easier as it has less silver content. Therefore, the silver industry set a standard percentage content for fine silver (925); what we know as "sterling silver". At Two Skies our silversmiths use 925 (sterling) silver for ring shafts and moving parts, and a very high 950% on our stones settings, which enables us to get a strong jewellery item with a beautiful and secure stone setting, without any gluing. Each piece of our jewellery is hand stamped with our Two Skies Hallmark alongside the recognised industry 925 Hallmark.