Lone Mountain Turquoise by Darryl Dean Begay

The Lone Mountain Turquoise mine produces beautiful stones favored by Native American jewelry artists. Darryl Dean Begay, a silversmith from Gallup New Mexico, shares a little about why he likes Lone Mountain Turquoise.

Lone Mountain has different turquoise you know you have your regular lone mountain then you have your fossilize lone mountain then drake lone mountain then you have the blue coral lone mountain and then just recently my friends Jean Waddell and Chris Locke. Chris Locke is the miner and Jean Waddell is the co-owner of the lone mountain mine. They came upon a pocket of red web lone mountain which is very cool you know because it looks like number eight so I haven’t had a chance to get a wholesome yet but I think that’s what I like about lone mountain is the variety of you know the specimens that you can use and also the turquoise is so hard you can cut really thin when you are inline. Some — part in like projects which require to be really thin it won’t break the color. This is my wife’s ring and has a very high grade lone mountain and the color hasn’t changed and you know very happy – because the high grade you know the color is to change. Like some I remember high grade Bisbee once you get is the skin oil to it will change color and it will turn more greenish because it’s more of a copper mine and these have different elements. So once the skin oil gets into it, it will stay more blue. So that’s one of the reasons why you know I like lone mountain turquoise. This is how it looks in the rough and having in the rough is like you can do whatever you want to do. You can carve it or you can cut it up to in like so these rough here belongs to Jean Waddell and I am going to make him a bracelet.

My name is Darryl Dean Begay and I support – native American art.