Understanding Turquoise

 

Preamble

This blog is to illustrate the beauty of Turquoise and repair the damage to Turquoise reputation as a gemstone.  The damage is a consequence of indiscriminate use of Turquoise as the name for anything remotely bluish.  Even if the blue color is completely absent, it still does not stop the gemological pimps to keep prostituting the name of Turquoise.  Regretfully, the science does provide the cover for such a behavior.  I can excuse geologists, but gemologists should know better.  While every gem is a mineral ( with some exceptions like coral, pearl, ,,,), only a minute fraction of one percent of minerals are gems.  This is true of Turquoise as it is true of any other gem specimens which have very many geological cousins, but very lonely in the world of gems.

Name Origin

Turquoise is french word which translates as turkish.  That tells us right away that gem became known in Western Europe via trade routes thru Turkey.  The primary source of Turquoise in the Ancient world were Egypt and Persia (Iran).  The best Turquoise came from Persia where the gem is called phyruza, meaning victorious.  This explains why Turquoise is the gem of choice to decorate handles of daggers, swords, and other edged weapons.  In Russia, gem is called biruza, which is phonetical equivalent of persian name, and we can conclude that Turquoise was exported to Russia directly from Persia.  Pliny the Elder called Turquoise kallalith, which means beautiful stone.

Turquoise Composition and Formation.

Turquoise is opaque, cryptocrystalline aggregate, but it does exist in crystal form.  Crystals are tiny.  The largest specimens rarely exceeds 3 millimeters in size, but they give us an indication of the real color of Turquoise. As you can see, there is no green, no yellow, but pure blue of equatorial sky.  If only crystals existed in size suitable for faceting, the gem would rival in beauty to the finest of Aquamarines.  Alas, one could dream.