Russia's Purple Majesty

Charoite in silver.  Wide band.  US size 6.5

 A year and a half ago I attended the best bead show I've ever been to.  I'm a small scale jeweler... certainly not navigating through the seas of Tucson (the biggest gem show there is).  I'll go to one, one of these days though.

I'm going off track.  It was the best show because there was an old Indian man selling turquoise, moonstone, and charoite among other gems.  I plucked through the beautiful pieces and made small talk for an hour.  An entire HOUR!  When I came across the charoite my breath was taken away!

"Ohhhhhh!!!  What is that??
"Charoite.  Comes only from Russia."

In hindsight I should have gotten more.  Apparently the mine is "dry" making charoite a soon to be rare gemstone.

Enjoy Russia's purple majesty...

Starting with the Charoite going clockwise: prasiolite and gold-fill, Hawaiian sea glass silver and brass (looks like copper, but I still need to remove the fire scale)  lavender chalcedony nuggets and silver.

...and a few shots from the show so long ago.  I geeked out with the camera phone.

This is a massive South-Western style cuff.  Look at the size of that kingman turquoise, bits of coral, and I want to say he said that was a bear claw next to the turquoise!  This was a heavy piece of jewelry!

He had dozens of these intricate cuffs.  Beautiful attention to detail.  Like the West was just pouring out silver and stones and there was nothing better to do than to create.  (sounds good to me!)

So many types of turquoise!  There's Kingman - Arizona, Spiderweb - China, Bisbee Nevada, Sleeping beauty - Arizona...

This is a slab of Rhodochrosite - Colorado.  There were shiny specs of quartz making the entire piece shimmer and glint when moved.  I could absolutely see myself going down the lapidary lane one of these days.  I really like rocks.  A little bit.

SUPER SIDE NOTE:

My scrap came in at $191 credit to Rio Grande.  I am super stoked to have found and purchased sea urchin bronze sheet!

This will go on the underside of rings and will certainly be made into earrings!  What better back-plate to sea glass than sea urchin cast impression metal!  Something worth being thrilled about:-)

And finally!!!  I just made the new summer banner for the shop and changed the wording accompanying my name.  Big things guys!!!!