Feeling Blue: Turquoise, Gold, and Love in the Depths of Winter
In the U.S., we tend to think of turquoise as symbolic of the Southwest: squash blossom necklaces, animal fetish pieces, a sacred stone amongst the Zuni, Apache, Navajo. We see it everywhere in silver, the sky set in the metal of the moon. For such tribes, turquoise symbolizes health, prosperity, and love: a heart strengthener in many ways.
In Europe, turquoise has its own history, set in gold. As the stone first arrived from Turkey, in the 16th century, the French called it "turquois," meaning "Turkish." The Persians believed turquoise to be made from the bones of those unhappily in love--those who literally felt so "blue." (Given it was also believed, in the Middle Ages, to prevent falling off horseback, perhaps wearing turquoise is a form of "getting back in the saddle" after a disastrous love affair.)
Prince Albert and Queen Victoria loved turquoise: how one could "pave" a snake with its cabochons to mimic scales, form tiny forget-me-not petals in the shade they exist in nature. Indeed, Victoria gave each of her bridesmaids a portrait of herself, encircled by droplets of this lovely stone.
How I would have loved to be one of those bridesmaids! Turquoise is my own mother's favorite color; and when I am home for Christmas, I always ask to wear her exquisitely carved Chinese turquoise beads or gold and citrine earrings with tiny turquoise drops. I realize, as I write this, that it's not insignificant I love to wear her turquoise in December, given it is one of December's three traditional birth stones. (The other two are blue topaz and blue tanzanite.)
It's odd: I've grown up thinking of turquoise as a stone of the summer: white linen shirts, a Sonoran sun baking rows of Native American pieces laid out in a market. But it's also a stone of the dark winter, its bright blue resonant with the ancient blue in glacier ice. What a perfect marriage, then, are turquoise and gold: coolness and warmth. A forget-me-not ring with the symbolic potency of a fragile flower set in an eternal stone. Like a mother, turquoise calls us back into its protective power, flowering even in the dead of winter.
