Turquoise Coral bracelet. The Turquoise beads are new-mined, of Arizona origin. There are still well over a dozen working commercial Turquoise mines in that South-West state. Quite a few Arizona mines have shut operations in the last ten-fifteen years, some simply depleted, as was the case of the fabulous Sleeping Beauty mine down south in the state, and most folding due to competition from imported Chinese Turquoise material. China has mined Turquoise since Antiquity and still has numerous working mines. At a premium level, the Turquoise of Arizona is rarely matched in colour and hardness by Chinese Turquoise, but the Chinese material, though tending more towards the greens and blue-greens, can often be quite attractive. The real crunch is its competitive price, for the cost of labour in China simply cannot be matched in Arizona.
The six native-cut gemstone Corals in the above “Turquoise Coral” bracelet are old beads from Sth India, doubtless originally from the East Mediterranean Sea around Sicily. Commerce between the Mediterranean and southern India pre-dates the Roman Empire by centuries, gemstone Coral in branch form being part of it. The “native-cut” of the shapes of the beads fashioned from Coral branches simply refers to the free form nature of the cut shapes, for not only is an approximate match in shape and size more important than any uniformity of shape, it is also considerably less wasteful of the precious and costly raw gemstone material.