THIS LISTING IS ONLY FOR A PAIR OF EARRINGS!
Ovals - 1⅜” x ¾”
These earrings are built in layers. Behind each stone visible above the cabochon like a rising moon a hand-reticulated sterling silver disc rises in a hammered, textured form whose surface catches light in the complex way that only reticulated silver does. In front of it, a large oval Kingman turquoise cabochon measuring 1⅜” x ¾” sits in a full twisted rope border bezel vivid aqua-teal with warm golden matrix moving through it in broad, confident sweeps, the color saturated and alive, the matrix bold enough to read across a room.
The composition works because the two elements speak different languages that somehow agree. The reticulated disc is all texture and movement silver that was heated to its threshold and allowed to find its own surface before being fixed in place. The turquoise is all color and stillness a stone that formed over millions of years and has not moved since. Behind and before. Silver and stone. Together they make something that neither could make alone.
Sterling shepherd hooks complete the earrings with easy natural movement. At 1⅜” these are substantial earrings present, confident, and entirely at home on the collarbone or the ear of someone who knows exactly what they are wearing.
Details:
Stone: Kingman Turquoise · Origin: Arizona · Matrix: Turquoise & Tans · Metal: Custom Sterling Silver · Pendant Setting: 1⅜” x ¾” · 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.
Kingman Turquoise Earrings
The Kingman mine sits in Mineral Park, Mohave County in northwestern Arizona one of the oldest and most storied turquoise operations in North America. Archaeological evidence places turquoise mining at Kingman as far back as 1000 AD, when Ancestral Puebloan and Mojave peoples worked the deposit long before European contact. The mine has been in continuous or near-continuous production ever since, making it one of the longest-running turquoise sources on the continent.
What distinguishes Kingman turquoise is the exceptional range and consistency of its color a vivid, saturated blue that collectors and silversmiths have prized for generations. Kingman produces some of the bluest turquoise in the world, ranging from bright robin’s egg and sky blue to deeper Persian blue, often with a distinctive black, brown, or silver matrix that provides striking contrast against the stone’s saturated ground. The water web Kingman where fine silver and black matrix forms a delicate web across the surface of the stone is among the most coveted turquoise formations anywhere, sought by serious collectors and commanding significant premiums over unmarked material.
Kingman turquoise is natural and genuine the mine produces both stabilized material for the commercial market and high grade natural stones for collectors and artisan jewelers who insist on untreated material. The distinction matters. Natural Kingman holds its color without treatment, a testament to the mineral stability of the deposit and the quality of the stone coming out of the ground.
The Mineral Park mine has passed through several ownership periods over the decades and production has been inconsistent periods of active mining followed by closure, each reopening producing new material of sometimes dramatically different character. What comes out of Kingman today is not guaranteed to look like what came out twenty years ago. Each period of production has its own signature. This stone carries the Kingman name because it earned it in the ground, in the color, and in the hands of a Taoseña who knows the difference.
