Turquoise and Black-Jet Earrings 001

This semiprecious stone is an aluminum and copper phosphate, which is highly valued for its quality and scarcity. Light blue, bluish green or green, it was already used in Ancient Egypt. The blue color is attributed to copper, while the green color may be the result of iron impurities or dehydration. It is a rare mineral, of secondary formation and is found mainly in desert regions. The mines of the current Iran, Sinai or the United States stand out. In Spain you can find turquoises based on ambligonite in the Valdeflorez mine (Cáceres).

Black-Jet has a compact conformation, is soft to the touch, light and quite hard. In Asturias it is called Acebache or Azebache. The best jet in the world, along with Whithby, is in Asturias in the Jurassic Coast, between Gijón and Ribadasella, with a texture, an intense color and incomparable hardness. Recent studies carried out by a research team of the University of Oviedo, show that the Asturian black-jet comes from a family of Jurassic trees, extinct 65 million years ago.