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December Birthstone: Turquoise
Turquoise is an open book.
A living truth.
She’s a sage learner who traversed through thousands of lives, living and dwelling in each of their truths.
She makes words her home and revels in wisdom learned and shared.
Turquoise is the kind of opaque stone brightening up the room - all without a flicker of sun.
She’s like that piece of sky lifting your mood and protecting you from the darkness. You don’t look for glitters and refractions, but for determined curiosity.
She is, after all, a stone marrying water with heat, without ever reaching the boiling point.
NAMESAKE
The French pierre turquoise, meaning ‘Turkish stone’, because merchants often found the stone in Turkish bazaars
Resembling a pool of cool water in a vast, arid desert, her existence was a marriage of coincidence and chance.
Fresh groundwater seeping underneath desert plaines, carrying with it an amalgam of metallic juices, traversing and transforming plain copper into a stunning blue miracle stone.
With all of its soothing energy,turquoise buoys you with its power to heal sore hearts, burnouts and the pain of suffering from the lies we tell ourselves.
This blue-green mineral easily stands out from the rest of gemstones.
The Aztecs made a mask out of hundreds of turquoise speckles to represent their god of Fire, while in Egypt, King Tut’s death mask was adorned with turquoise ornaments.
TURQUOISE’S VIBES
Birthstone for: December
Turquoise zodiac sign: Sagittarius (23 November - 21 December)
Turquoise chakra:
The fourth chakra - the Heart or Anahata chakra.
Use it to get unstuck from irrational worries and anxieties or to bring radical (but positive) ideas earthside.
Thefifth chakra - the Throat or the Visuddha chakra.
Located in the throat area, to release the heat off of difficult conversations. This chakra helps you to have mature, honest conversations, channel creative freedom, and listen to your inner intuition.
How turquoise fits into your life:
Your partner of 11 years, or your partner of 5 years.
The President of your Dolly Parton fan club
Your local sensei
December babies who listen to The Decemberists
Vibes:
Balance
Health
Immortality
Friendship
Protection
Heritage
Luck
Leadership
Self-acceptance
Prayer
Healing
Communication
Use for:
Lifting your spirits.
Clearing nasty smog from your own personal atmosphere
Breaking writer’s block.
Beating jet lag
Anti-hysteria, but also to snap down anyone who calls you hysteric when you’re just expressing natural human emotions.
Calming your nerves when public speaking.
Your third eye during meditation
Uniting earth and sky on your lunch break / a bit of extra protection against bad luck, bad radio jingles, and bad people.
TURQUOISE’S ORIGINS
Turquoise can be found at higher elevations (think Himalayas), in the Sub-Mediterranean deserts or America’s rocky mountains.
A popular ornament among ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Native Americans, these days it’s mostly mined in Iran, Mexico, Turkey, and the USA.
Our turquoises are ethically sourced from:
Tibet, USA, Egypt
TURQUOISE’S DURABILITY
Check out our turquoise collection, and let us know which pieces you would mix and match to make your very own turquoise jewelry set!
Tough Love level:
5-6 Mohs scale of hardness with ‘fair’ toughness. Back then, people wore a turquoise necklace as a talisman to their spiritual being. However, as a stone, turquoise is actually pretty brittle and soft. Avoid wearing it everyday or use it as earrings or necklace.
May be oiled to improve color.
Often stabilized with resin to help improve its durability and prevent turquoise from changing color as it reacts with the oils in your skin. Turquoise is a very porous and soft gemstone. The resin fills in the tiny holes and crevices to form a firm stabilized turquoise. .
Reconstituted turquoise adds resin and dye added to powdered turquoise, and is then pressed into blocks.
Cleaning, care, and caution:
Avoid hot water and household chemicals when wearing turquoise. Never use steam or ultrasonic cleaners. Use warm, soapy water, preferably made from natural ingredients, like our lerak jewelry wash!
TURQUOISE’S TYPES
Turquoise is often classified by its webbing patterns and textures (the dark brown to black matrix around the blue areas).
The more intricate the pattern, the higher value it is.
Different origins also produce different patterns so it’s not uncommon for turquoise to be named after their mining location.
Royston Turquoise
Mined in Nevada, USA, this is the greener variety of turquoise. This stone gives off a 16th century’s painting vibe with its splash of blue-green color on a rustic background.
Tyrone Turquoise
The by-product of a copper mine in Burro Mountains, New Mexico, USA this turquoise is similar to the royston turquoise. Tyrone has a radiant copper glow, adding to its antique look. Tyrone turquoise comes in a range of blue to green colors.
New Lander Turquoise
Mined in Nevada, USA, the new lander turquoise has a more even webbing patterns and matrix. This variety is highly prized for its golden to brown matrix and occasionally found exhibiting orange to yellow hue.
Cripple Creek Turquoise
Mined in Colorado, USA. It’s considered one of the highest grades of turquoise due to its intricate webbing textures. It’s not a solid blue color, nor does it have a patchy webbing. It's very lightly textured and its matrix often shows a golden luster.
Sleeping Beauty
This turquoise is the princess of all turquoise. Polished to its shiniest luster, sleeping beauty turquoise has an even bright blue color and is nearly clear of the dark spider webbing. Sleeping beauty turquoise is mined in Arizona, USA.
Tibetan Turquoise
Comes from the Himalayan mountains. Considered a sacred stone, almost every Tibetan has worn this at some point in their life. Tibetan turquoise has a distinct green glow, and is now a rarity.
Persian Turquoise
Synonymous with the historical robin’s-egg turquoise which was famously traded in the Silk Road. Mined in Iran and the subsequent Arabian peninsula, it’s believed that the mining sites are 7,000 years old, and still going strong.
Imagine all the turquoise dotting ancient masks and castles - it’s likely they were mined from this area. Persian turquoise tends to have a small amount of copper and thus it’s most sought after for its opaque blue-sky color.