THIS LISTING IS FOR A CUFF ONLY! THE MATCHING RING CAN BE FOUND ON THE RING PAGE!
Cuff Size Med on a 5mm Sterling Split Shank Band
Details:
Stone: Nevada #8 · Origin: Nevada · Matrix: Turquoise, Brown & Tan · Metal: Custom Sterling Silver · Cuff Size: Med/Large · Stone Setting: 23mm × 24mm Teardrop · Band Width: 5mm Split Shank · One of a Kind
Made in Taos by a Taosena.
Some Jewelry is made. Some is found. At Fire & Stone, it's both.
Nevada #8 Turquoise Cuff
The Number 8 mine sits in Elko County in northeastern Nevada high desert country at the edge of the Ruby Mountains, remote even by Nevada standards. The mine takes its name from a mining claim number assigned in the early twentieth century and has since become one of the most recognized and collected turquoise names in the world. Active mining at Number 8 ran primarily through the mid-twentieth century, with the most prized material coming out of the ground between the 1920s and the 1970s. The mine is now considered exhausted for practical purposes. What exists of Number 8 turquoise exists already cut, collected, and in circulation. No new material is coming.
That finality is precisely what drives the Number 8 market. Collectors and silversmiths who work with genuine Number 8 are working with a finite and diminishing supply of stones that cannot be replenished. Each piece that gets set in silver is one fewer loose stone in the world. The provenance matters enormously fake and misattributed Number 8 is common in the market, and buyers who know the material are appropriately skeptical of stones offered without clear origin documentation.
What makes Number 8 instantly recognizable to anyone who knows turquoise is its spider web matrix a dense, intricate network of reddish-brown to black matrix that laces across the stone’s surface in patterns of extraordinary delicacy and regularity. The turquoise ground at Number 8 ranges from bright sky blue to blue-green, and it is the combination of that vivid color with the dense spider web that produces the stones that serious collectors pursue with particular intensity. Plain Number 8 without the web is beautiful. Number 8 spider web is in a category of its own.
This is a stone with a finished story. The mountain gave what it gave, the mine closed, and what came out of that ground in Elko County is now in cases and settings around the world. This one is in Taos, set in silver by a Taoseña who understands exactly what she is holding.
