New Mexico - Turquoise Museum

We've been out of the tourist mode for a few months as we spent time in Camp Verde, Arizona, which is about 25 minutes from Sedona.  We spent the time tending to "maintenance" duties (truck, trailer, and even ourselves) and taking a few days to celebrate the wedding of my beautiful niece.  We loved the RV park but after 2 months it was time to move on.  So we headed east with our first stop in Albuquerque.

We had a free day so I googled "what to do in Albuquerque" and a list of "normal" things came up.  But something caught my eye so we headed here.

The Turquoise Museum is a family business - the most recent generation is the 5th generation.  

We arrived 1/2 hour earlier than our scheduled tour and were lucky to be able to join the large group of two other visitors :-)  We were escorted to the museum by 4th generation Joe Dan Lowry so that we could watch an informative movie about the museum.

What a beautiful building!  The castle used to be the home of Gertrude Zachary, who was briefly married to Richard Zachary, one of the family members.  

The first thing you see when entering the castle is the turquoise chandelier.  Joe Dan (4th generation) commissioned the turquoise chandelier to be built by Marianne Friedrich in 2018.  It has over 21,500 natural Sleeping Beauty turquoise beads and many thousands of Swarovski beads.  Marianne worked 6 and 7 days a week for 3 months to complete the project.  It has 94 strands and the longest strands are 32 feet.  A photograph of it was first published in the Japanese magazine Lightning in February, 2019.

And then we walked farther into the castle and saw so many beautiful items.

We, along with the other two visitors, were the only people in the museum so we were very fortunate to be able to spend time with 5th generation Jacob Lowry.

Jacob started learning how to cut turquoise when he was 9 years old and has traveled New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada turquoise mining areas.  He began giving lectures about turquoise when he was 12 years old and has been attending the Tucson Gem and Mineral show since he was 18.  What a wealth of information and we tried to absorb his knowledge.

This is the George Washington Stone - see the resemblance of George Washington from the quarter?  Use your imagination.

This piece is the most memorable to me - and, perhaps, the most valuable.

Number Eight (Black Web)

Nevada

Allison Lee

Jacob explained that the stones are sold wholesale for about $5,000 per carat.  See the smallest stones at the bottom of the horseshoe shape?  Those are about 1.5 carats - the entire necklace has enough weight to be worth about $500,000!  Hope they have a good alarm system.

This piece is exquisite.

LaTurquesa, Nacozari

Mexico

DavidMaria Art

I love this one!

Horse Necklace

24 strands of beads

5 pounds of turquoise

It was not uncommon for heavy equipment operators at large open pit copper and gold mines to uncover a small turquoise deposit.  It is rumored that they might fill the day's empty lunch box with some of the turquoise to sneak out and sell.  Hundreds of pounds of turquoise from the Bisbee, Morenci, Nacozari and other copper mining areas has been brought to market in lunch boxes.

Ron particularly likes Royston from Nevada, which is mined in the Tonopah area and the reason we visited there last fall (click to read about our visit).

So many beautiful things to see.

We had a wonderful day and learned so much about turquoise.  We were so happy we found this gem! (see how I did that?)