the.com/turquoise
the only gem named after the road it took to get famous
means A blue-to-green semiprecious stone, or the vivid greenish-blue color that takes its name from it.
from From Old French 'pierre turquoise,' meaning 'Turkish stone' — not because the gem came from Turkey, but because European traders first encountered it arriving through Turkish lands, carried along trade routes from its true sources in Persia and the Sinai. The 'turque-' element is simply the French word for Turkish. The color sense, naming a hue after the stone, came along much later in English.
- name origin
- means Turkish, though it came from Persia and Egypt
- copper trick
- its blue is literally oxidized copper minerals
- pharaoh approved
- Tutankhamun's burial mask is inlaid with it
- mood ring
- it fades and greens from skin oils and sunlight
- first mined gem
- Egyptians dug it over 6,000 years ago
sleeping beauty turquoise — mine in globe, arizona, famous for its robin's-egg blue color, produced turquoise since the 1870s
kingman turquoise — arizona mine near kingman that supplied high-quality turquoise for navajo jewelry for over a century
bisbee turquoise — mine in bisbee, arizona, known for distinctive turquoise with brown limonite matrix patterns