Mystery Beads

I finished this set this morning. While I have vowed to learn more about gem and mineral identification for the beads I have, the farthest I have come is "oh...those are pretty"! Such is the case with these beads. The beads are various shades of brown with turquoise inclusions in them of varying shades of blue and green. The beads are 18 mm size and so attractive! They were purchased at Western Traders in Las Cruces, NM. The owner of this store saw me peeking in the windows of the store an hour before opening time and offered to open the store for me! How is that for customer service? While I was not that desperate for beads, it certainly added a lot of convenience to our day to not have to return during regular store hours. Needless to say, he probably felt I made it worth his effort. He had wonderful beads inside the rather large store! I will return to his store on our next trip through Las Cruces.

The coiled copper components are a nice complementary color to the blues and lighten the weight of this longer, natural stone necklace quite a bit. Copper jewelry has such an inner warmth, I think.

I made the necklace long enough to slip easily over one's head and I like the look!

After more research, I have come to the conclusion that these are either natural Chinese Turquoise or natural "enhanced" Chinese Turquoise stone beads. There seems to be some controversy by beaders about the value of enhanced over genuine, as-is, stones. Since I don't know which these are, all I will say is it goes back to what I said in the beginning, "these are pretty beads"!