Golden Hills turquoise comes from Kazakhstan the vast Central Asian steppe country that stretches from the Caspian Sea to the borders of China, ancient Silk Road territory where copper and turquoise deposits have been worked for thousands of years. The Golden Hills deposit sits in the mineral-rich terrain of northern Kazakhstan, where volcanic and sedimentary formations similar to those that produce turquoise in the American Southwest have yielded a stone of exceptional color and character that is only now reaching serious attention in the Western collector and artisan market.
What immediately distinguishes Golden Hills turquoise is its color a vivid, saturated sky blue of exceptional clarity that rivals the finest Persian and American material. The ground color at Golden Hills runs from bright robin’s egg and electric blue to softer powder blue, often with a warm tan, brown, or golden matrix that reflects the iron-rich host rock of its formation environment. It is the matrix that gives Golden Hills its name the warm golden and ochre host rock that surrounds and interpenetrates the turquoise, providing a color contrast that is both striking and distinctly different from the black and brown matrices of most American turquoise.
Golden Hills is natural and untreated a distinction that matters enormously in a turquoise market flooded with stabilized, treated, and imitation material. The deposit produces stones of sufficient hardness and stability to be worked and worn without enhancement, and serious collectors who have encountered the material rank it among the finest turquoise being produced anywhere in the world today. It is not American turquoise it does not carry the provenance of the Southwest mines but it carries its own ancient geography, its own Silk Road history, and a color quality that speaks entirely for itself.
Turquoise has been traded across Central Asia for over five thousand years. The stone in this piece traveled a long road to reach Taos — out of Kazakh earth, across a very old trade route, and into silver in the high desert of New Mexico by a Taoseña who recognized immediately what she was holding.
