THIS LISTING IS ONLY FOR A PAIR OF EARRINGS!
Oval - 1⅛” x ⅝”
No two reticulated silver pieces are alike. The technique heating sterling silver to the precise threshold where the surface flows while the interior holds produces a topographic landscape that the maker guides but cannot fully control, a collaboration between hand and fire that ends differently every time. The disc behind each stone in these earrings carries a fluid, wave-like surface silver that moved like water before it was fixed in place, oxidized to bring out every ridge and valley in the metal’s transformed surface.
In front of it, a matched oval Kingman turquoise cabochon measuring 1⅛” x ⅝” sits in a full twisted rope border bezel vivid sky blue with warm golden matrix tracing quiet paths across the stone’s surface. The rope border grounds the composition in the Southwest silverwork tradition, connecting the modern reticulated disc above to the classic bezel below in a conversation between two approaches to the same material. Together they make something more interesting than either would alone.
Sterling shepherd hooks complete the earrings with easy natural movement. Substantial enough to be noticed, refined enough to be worn anywhere.
Details:
Stone: Kingman Turquoise · Origin: Arizona · Matrix: Turquoise & Tans · Metal: Custom Sterling Silver · Earrings Setting: 1⅛” x ⅝” · 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.
