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Think
of a sunflower and you think of yellow. Think of a white sunflower
... the creator doesn't make that kind. Although some plant
geneticists might breed one some day.
Turquoise,
a semi-precious stone, has an officially recognized chemical composition
that mineralogists use in identifying what any stone is. That
composition of turquoise includes aluminum
and copper. It is
copper that gives the varying shades of blue and greens.
Technically
there are other things the mineralogist looks at to classify a stone.
These include hardness, specific gravity (which is the weight relative
to size), a color scratch test on a mineralogist special scratch plate
and, in more extensive tests, the color of the flame when burned.
Howlite
is frequently dyed blue and passed off as turquoise. In a scratch test,
Howlite might fool you as it is also a relatively soft stone (around 4
on the Mohs scale of hardness). Howlite has black veining or matrix
similar to Turquoise. I have seen ordinary Howlite blatantly passed off
as White Turquoise to the unsuspecting buyer.
Howlite is also quite frequently
sold in its natural form with misleading names like "white
turquoise", "white buffalo turquoise" or "white
buffalo stone”.
What
is the chemical composition of the various rocks being promoted as White
Turquoise? I really haven't a clue. What is important to you
as a buyer is that for any stone to carry the label Turquoise it must
contain some form of copper and aluminum. The blue and green colors
which give Turquoise its distinctive appearance comes from the copper
component, as mentioned above.
Turquoise
without the coloring is simply not Turquoise. Without the copper
component those stones cannot lawfully be certified as Turquoise ...
period.
An
article
written by the New
Mexico Bureau of Mines and
Mineral Resources titled “The Non-Metallic Mineral Resources of New Mexico and Their Economic
Features” states, “Turquoise is a complex hydrous phosphate
of aluminum and copper. The color of good material ranges from sky-blue
to apple-green, with a waxy luster that suggests translucency. It
generally occurs in compact masses instead of in crystalline form and is
frequently veined with impurities. This foreign material sometimes adds
to,
instead of detracting from,
the desirability of the turquoise for gem
purposes, as the rich brown iron stains are often distributed in
patterns that are attractively brought out in polishing.” The paper
further states, “Vein turquoise is often separated from the granite on
one or both sides by quartz and also occurs in direct contact with the
rock without quartz filling.”
What
we know is that quartz is not part of the turquoise, but is sometimes
found with the host rock. We don’t know if the white turquoise on the
market is quartz, natural Howlite, or some other material, but found the
New
Mexico Bureau of Mines and
Mineral Resources
information useful in our
research to help explain the fact that turquoise is never absent
of color.
In
summary, there is not and there cannot be a stone called White
Turquoise. The words “White Turquoise” is an oxymoron.
Not
only is White Turquoise rare, as the proponents of this turquoise will
tell you, it is nonexistent! The very definition of Turquoise in all
mineralogical books shows official Turquoise as having a copper
component to provide the coloring. White rocks coming from a mine
that produces Turquoise are no more Turquoise than the black igneous
rocks surrounding the Turquoise veins are called Black Turquoise. Now…
if you ever start hearing about Black Turquoise, you’ll already know
it is not turquoise.
If
you click here you will see photos of beads currently labeled as
"White Turquoise" on the market today.
Until
next time... Rock on!
Lin
Valentine
Turquoise Specialist
Copyright ©
2010 Lin Valentine and The Turquoise Chick
This article may not be used without the express written permission of
the
author.
References:
NEW
MEXICO SCHOOL OF MINES
STATE BUREAU OF MINES AND MINERAL RESOURCES
E. H. Wells, President and Director
BULLETIN NO. 12
The Non-Metallic Mineral Resources of New Mexico
and
Their Economic Features
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