Eye Dazzling Natural Sleeping Beauty Turquoise
Sleeping beauty turquoise is a gorgeous blue gemstone that comes from a mine located near Globe, Arizona and is noted for its solid, light blue color with no matrix. Zuñi pueblo silversmiths for use in petite point, needlepoint, and inlay jewelry because of its natural hardness and consistent color. The sleeping beauty turquoise mine is one of the largest in north America and is still operating.
Sleeping beauty turquoise on sterling silver sheets
Driving into Globe, Arizona has long been a major stop along the US-60 heading out from phoenix to the eastern part of Arizona because of the copper mining. The copper mining is still big here, and BHP copper dominates the landscape. They don't mine the turquoise because it . This is left to the sleeping beauty turquoise mine, who also runs a little jewelry store and other southwestern goods. Here they also sell the natural gemstone they collect from sleeping beauty mountain. The store is on the right side of the road as you travel east away from Miami. It comes right after a curve in the road and is set up against the steep rocks on that side. The sleeping beauty turquoise display inside the store is modest, but they offer a descent selection of material here in its varied forms and sizes. The stones are offered to the public in small quantities and smaller sizes. Turquoise nuggets are offered in their completely natural form, tumbled and polished, or cut and set as cabochon's with backing, ready for jewelry. The rare, larger specimens, quantities and chunks are usually offered to buyers and re-sellers through a waiting list system as they become available. The huge worldwide demand for sleeping beauty makes it difficult for the mine to keep up and the turquoise is often presold before it is even mined. Jeweler's and artists compete to buy up as much of the quality material as they can while it is available.
The Native American Standard for Jewelry: Sleeping Beauty Turquoise
Sleeping beauty turquoise hand-cut nuggets the color of a blue robins egg
Polished cabochons of sleeping beauty turquoise
The specific mineral, Sleeping beauty turquoise, has become a standard for southwest native American jewelry. The bright and even sky-blues, the hard glassy polish, and the lumpy nugget-like textures are recognized around the world as what Sleeping Beauty should look like. Sometimes sleeping beauty nuggets will have black in the nooks and creases, in between the higher areas, like the cabs shown in the pictures on the right. This does happen naturally to sleeping beauty, but is sometimes applied when finishing and polishing the stone. the appearance is often achieved by applying a dark substance to the stone before working down the final polish. When the stone or cabochon is polished, the black remains only in the lower creases and crags. The dark substance can be anything from polishing wax and dirt, to India ink. It does not change the "natural" status of the stone at all and cabs with this polish can be bought from the sleeping beauty mine as natural stone. This tradition started decades ago and is recreating the appearance of antique Indian jewelry owned for years by native Americans. The crags of this old sky blue stone would have collected dirt and oils over the years while the higher areas became polished with wear, Bringing out the texture of the nugget stone. This process gives the nugget or cabochon more depth and character, enhancing the qualities of the natural sleeping beauty formations.
