THURSDAY,SEPTEMBER 26,2002
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 9
Trendy turquoise not always authentic
By Mandalee Meisner mmeisner@kansan.com Jeyplay writer
John Nowak/Kansan
Ask anyone who knows jewelry: turquoise is the hot stone.
"It's extremely popular," Elizabeth Kurata, owner of Lawrence jewelry store Africa Adorned, 5 E. Seventh St., said. "It's been in demand for three years, but especially this year."
Turquoise,whose Native-American patron goddess is called 'Changing Woman,'is 'in' this fall.
Turquoise, a stone found in desert copper mines and lauded for its otherworldly beauty, is the star of the season. It ranges in color from robin's egg blue to sea-foam green, and graces the necklines of celebrities and campus girls alike.
Kurata, however, takes the explosion in turquoise popularity with a grain of salt. She started her business 17 years ago, and knows well the sometimes illogical cycles of popular whim that dictate jewelry sales.
"Stones and colors come and go," she said.
While Kurata sells necklaces, pendants, bracelets and rings with a more contemporary look, much turquoise jewelry currently on the market is inspired by the traditional Southwestern style.
A chunky piece of turquoise set in silver may look centuries old, but new methods of altering and artificially making "stones" drastically affect the way people sell and buy turquoise now.
Natural turquoise is porous and relatively soft. Native Americans called their patron goddess of turquoise "Changing Woman," because the sun, natural oils and water can change the stone's hue, or even make a once-stunning piece crumble.
Now, Southwestern miners take the delicate turquoise and inject it with an epoxy agent that consolidates and "stabilizes" even the most powdery stone and makes it easy to work with.
Dye is sometimes added to the epoxy. This creates more vibrant blues and greens, and prevents the color from fading.
Dye and stabilization may make for more permanent accessories,but they take away from the value of the stone.
At Goldmakers, 723 Massachusetts St., Peter Zacharias uses different kinds of turquoise, both natural and augmented. In order to repair broken jewelry, he has to match the color, patterns and inconsistencies of the original turquoise.
He said it was easy to spot stabilized or dyed turquoise — you just have to look
carefully.
According to Zacharias, one dead giveaway is a "blob" of epoxy resin on the turquoise's surface, that shows itself as a tiny, clear imperfection on an otherwise smooth stone.
Another way to tell is if the stone appears to hold a brighter hue around the matrix. A turquoise matrix is the webbing, veins and splotches of other minerals that get mingled with turquoise, and are difficult to separate from the pure stone.
"Dye travels along the flaws," Zacharias said.
Allenroy Paquin, a Native-American jewelry artist from Albuquerque, N.M., said he started putting more turquoise in his own jewelry when its popularity started to rise this past summer.
Paquin admitted most of what he used was stabilized, but said some artists tried to pass off stabilized turquoise as the real thing.
Most Southwestern turquoise mines have been severely depleted from years of intensive mining. The only stones left in these mines are of poor quality and require epoxy injection to make them workable.
He said he could barely find natural turquoise anymore.
Only about one percent of contemporary mined turquoise can be used in its natural state.
"Technology is taking away from our traditions," Paquin said.
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