THIS LISTING IS ONLY FOR PENDANT ON A 18" BROWN LEATHER CORD W/SILVER FINDINGS
Pendant Teardrop 1¼” x 1⅜” - Matching earrings are available for purchase on the earrings page.
This stone looks like New Mexico from above. The freeform Apache dendritic rhyolite cabochon measures 1¼” x 1⅜” its surface moving through soft rose, blush, and mauve in sweeping horizontal bands that read like aerial geology, like the layered face of a canyon wall at the end of the day. And at the base, rising from the warm ground in dark, branching formations, a stand of dendritic inclusions manganese oxide crystals that grew slowly through the stone over millions of years that look exactly like a treeline at dusk seen from a mesa above.
Set in oxidized .925 sterling silver with a full hand-twisted rope border, the freeform bezel follows the stone’s natural shape with quiet precision. The pendant arrives on an 18” brown leather cord that grounds the piece in the earth tones of its origin warm, natural, and entirely at home against the stone it carries.
Details:
Stone: Apache Dendritic Rhyolite · Origin: New Mexico · Matrix: Red and Black · Metal: Custom Sterling Silver · Pendant Setting: 1¼” x 1⅜” Teardrop · One of a Kind with Makers Mark
Made in Taos by a Taosena.
Some Jewelry is made. Some is found. At Fire & Stone, it's both.
The Pink Mesa - Apache Dendritic Rhyolite from NM Necklace
Apache dendritic rhyolite comes from the volcanic highlands of New Mexico ancient lava country where successive flows of rhyolitic magma cooled and hardened over millions of years, leaving behind a fine-grained volcanic rock of exceptional mineral complexity. New Mexico sits at the convergence of several major geological provinces the Rio Grande Rift, the Colorado Plateau, and the Basin and Range and it is that geological restlessness that created the conditions for stones of this character.
What makes Apache dendritic rhyolite so distinctive is the dendrite inclusions that form within it feathery, fractal patterns of manganese oxide that crystallized as mineral-rich groundwater moved slowly through microscopic fractures in the hardening rhyolite. The word dendrite comes from the Greek for tree, and the name earns itself — the inclusions branch and spread across the stone’s surface like winter trees against a pale sky, like root systems seen from below, like something that grew in the dark over a very long time.
The rhyolite matrix itself carries the warm earth tones of New Mexico volcanic country cream, tan, ochre, and soft grey providing a quiet ground against which the dark dendritic patterns read with striking clarity. Each stone is entirely unique, its pattern determined by the precise path that mineral-rich water traveled through ancient rock. No two pieces carry the same branching. No two tell the same story.
This is a New Mexico stone in every sense formed in New Mexico earth, shaped by New Mexico geology, and set in silver in Taos by a Taoseña who knows this land.
