Featured What is the stone in vintage Emilia Castillo silver pendant?

Can anyone identify the stone (1.5" high) in this vintage pendant signed TO-85 925 (Emilia Castillo)--maybe crushed malachite or turquoise bonded together? More info following photos.

I sent a message via her website last week, but haven't received a response (the most recent collection shown is from 2019--maybe her studio had to close because of the pandemic). There's a bracelet shown that has one stone that looks similar, and the description says the bracelet includes malachite and turquoise among other stones. Some of her non-jewelry pieces include "inlaid malachite" that looks similar to this pendant.

The surface of the stone has some crazing, also a crack on the bottom edge. I did a Google image search and couldn't find a similar pendant. I'm guessing it's from the 1980's (I paid $1.50 for it at a thrift store--it came with a cheap non-silver chain). Emilia Castillo is the daughter of Antonio Castillo who trained under William Spratling and was married for a short time to Margo Carr (Margo de Taxco). Any help with identifying the stone is appreciated.

 

Looks like one of the chrysocolla variants, just don't ask me which.

 

You get malachite mixed with azurite from that part of the world, but that's not what this looks like. Evelyb30 has just suggested chrysocolla. I was thinking some kind of turquoise but chrysocolla seems more promising.

 

Thank you evelyb30, I googled chrysocolla (which I'd never heard of) and the description seems to fit. According to firemountaingems.com "Chrysocolla is sometimes coated with clear, colorless resin to improve the durability and appearance" -- my pendant looks like it has some type of coating because of the crazing on the front and what looks like an uncoated spot on the center back.

 

Think the euphemism is 'stabilized.'

 

Thanks, Bronwen.

 

My guess would also be chrysocolla. It’s not turquoise, malachite or azurite. Lovely piece.

 

Thank you, reader.

 

Looks like this-


https://georarities.com/shop/tc14-d...green-chrysocolla-stone-for-display-lapidary/

edit- "This turquoise rock is from a mine in Mexico."

 

Yes exactly! Thank you singing for posting the photo and link. Interesting to read that the example was described as having turquoise veins in a chrysocolla matrix stone and the black spots appear to be tenorite (which I'd never heard of), and the rock is from a mine in Mexico. I'll print out the information and keep it with the pendant so I can better describe it when I sell it. Thank you again for finding that example.

 

Welcome @Joan

 

Hi - it very well could be chrysocolla and turquoise with tenorite. All three minerals are cupric (meaning copper is part of it, so it has to form where copper is present - azurite and malachite are also cupric) and tenorite does occur with chrysocolla (see this link for tenorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenorite). The fractured texture of the stone would indicate it probably was crushed to fit the form of the the jeweler want to set, and this kind of makes sense as both turquoise and chrysocolla tend to be similar in hardness, and both are soft (most turquoise is too soft in its natural state for use in jewelry). Regardless, it's a beautiful piece! By the way, I am one of the owners of the store @singing linked to - georarities. We have a number of natural small and medium sized boulders and stones composed of chrysocolla, turquoise and tenorite. We acquired this material directly from the mine owner - the mine is in Mexico. You can see some of the other examples of the material here, although we probably should update the photos as the ones posted are not the best. https://georarities.com/?s=chrysocolla&post_type=product

 

The same thing is true of turquoise. Much more modern turquoise is injected with resin and heated to allow the resin to penetrate and harden allow the stone to be hard enough to be cut-able. This true even for much of the high quality modern jewelry turquoise. The issue is that it's very hard to find natural nuggets of turquoise hard enough and large enough to be cutable for jewelry. What there was has mostly already been found by the Native Americans. That's why old Indian turquoise jewelry is so special - not only for it's artistry, history, culture and rarity, but also because of the very high quality and rarity of the natural stone.

Michael (Georarities)

 

the 1st Nations artists of the Southwest , did not always use high quality...or even natural stones.....and even took to imported turq......

 

The modern ones seem to love synthetic opal. It's a lot easier to cut and works great in inlay. The real ones.... not so much. They liked dragon's breath glass too.