Zuni Turquoise Jewelry

Zuni turquoise jewelry is well known for it's petit point appearance. Having inhabited the New Mexico / Arizona area since the beginning of time, the Zuni are known around the world for their beautiful jewelry, carvings and pottery. Zuni jewelry is very popular today and antique and vintage pieces are highly collectible.

Traditional Zuni turquoise jewelry is identified by it's painstaking construction. Typically, it is made up of tiny stones each hand set into it's own bezel and combined together in sterling wilver to make a design that resembles a fine needlepoint. This style is called petit point and quite valuable due to the time and skilled craftsmanship required to make it.

Zuni turquoise comes from the sleeping beauty mine which is known for it's beautiful sky blue stones. The stones are set in sterling silver and can be just silver and turquoise or can combine coral, jet and mother of pearl. Typical petit point designs use mainly turquoise and usually feature long thin stones in an elongated oval shape each in it's own bezel setting placed side by side.

Another popular Zuni turquoise jewelry making style is called inlay. This is like a mosaic, where they use slivers of turquoise, coral, onyx and mother of pearl and lay them next to each other to create a design. Sometimes the stones are butted up against each other and other times there is a thin layer of silver between each stone.

Collecting Zuni turquoise jewelry can be a fun and rewarding hobby. Buy only the highest quality pieces that you can afford, but most of all buy pieces that you like and want to wear. You can narrow your collection to 1 style of jewelry or try to collect as many different examples as you can. You can limit yourself to vintage jewelry only, new jewelry only or a combination of the two!

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