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Price: AU$ 287 (free worldwide shipping)
This necklace is, like all of our other pieces, a one-off design, intended for a woman that appreciates individuality and commitment to quality. The beads for this eclectic necklace have been collected all over the world and put together to create a piece of strong contrast. The piece contains, amongst others, these semi-precious beads:
- The focal point of this necklace is a raw Amethyst nugget from Egypt. Amethyst is the purple variety of quartz with an impurity of iron, which gives it the eye-catching purple colour. Amethyst has been an extravagance in violet for many thousands of years, coveted by princes both ecclesiastical and secular. In popular belief, the amethyst offers protection against drunkenness – for the Greek words ‘amethystos’ means ‘not intoxicated’ in translation.
- Although the ore for Turquoise (stabilized and dyed orange/ purple teeth) comes from California, these beads have been sourced from China. Owing to a culture of thousands of years of bead making, some of the world’s best lapidaries are still found in China. Chemically speaking, these stunning beads are turquoise stone – minus the copper components – and as such they appear white, rather than bluish green. While the world knows and trades these stones as stabilized & dyed Turquoise, these semi-precious beads are technically speaking made from Howlite. Howlite is characterized by eye-catching contrasting charcoal veins, and because it is very porous, it takes up dye easily to look lustrous in its own right.
- Button Pearls, produced by the freshwater triangle mussel (Hyriopsis cumingii) near Shanghai, China. The beads are produced by grafting tissue of foreign mussels into the triangle mussel, which responds to this intrusion of foreign protein by producing the lustrous nacre bead.
- Purple freeform slabs of Variscite, also known as Imperial Jasper from Brazil.
- Two different types of agate are part of this necklace: faceted Agate (purple balls), and weathered Agate (pink balls) from Brazil.
- Concentric squares made of iridescent Mother of Pearl from Mollusk Aquaculture in China. Mother of pearl consists of hard but brittle aragonite and is supplemented by the mollusks with an organic material similar to silk. The result is the strong, flexible material which can withstand hard use and which looks simply stunning.
- Oceanic Jasper teeth (green) from India. Jasper, which belongs to the Quartz family is one of the oldest known gemstones, and was very popular in ancient times. It has been written about in very early Greek, Hebrew, Assyrian, Persian and Latin publications, as well as the Bible.
- Green-turquoise Chrysocolla (large and smaller squares) from Congo.
- Sterling silver plated and Tibetan silver beads sourced from South Korea.
