Magnesite: The White Stone Sold as Turquoise

Magnesite earns a page here for the opposite reason to every other stone in this guide. It is a magnesium carbonate, similar to calcite, naturally white[1] — and in this market you will most often meet it wearing another stone's name. Lowry states the practice without softening it: howlite and magnesite are naturally white minerals that are dyed to imitate a variety of turquoise colors[2]. If you are learning to buy turquoise, magnesite is the shape the mistake usually takes.

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Sold as Wild Horse: white and chocolate-brown, set in a silver ring. Magnesite, not turquoise — magnesite
Sold as Wild Horse: white and chocolate-brown, set in a silver ring. Magnesite, not turquoise · magnesite · © Turquoise Skies Inc.
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Sold as White Owl / Wild Stallion: cream patches in dark brown. Magnesite, not turquoise — magnesite
Sold as White Owl / Wild Stallion: cream patches in dark brown. Magnesite, not turquoise · magnesite · © Turquoise Skies Inc.
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Sold as White Owl / Wild Stallion: dark brown with cream spots. Magnesite, not turquoise — magnesite
Sold as White Owl / Wild Stallion: dark brown with cream spots. Magnesite, not turquoise · magnesite · © Turquoise Skies Inc.

Magnesite in the Masters' Hands

Honest answer: it doesn't have a roster, and we are not going to invent one. Magnesite appears in the literature of this trade chiefly as an imitation material and as a mineralogical near-neighbor of turquoise, not as a stone that named Southwest masters chose for its own qualities. Where white stone is deliberately set in Southwest work, the documented material is usually white shell — the Zuni turn to white shell alone as a setting for silver bracelets, brooches and rings is a recorded mid-century development[3], and it is a different story with a different meaning. Magnesite, dolomite, howlite and calcite have all been marketed in the turquoise industry for their unusual white colors and matrixes[1]. Marketed is the operative verb.

Reading Magnesite

Dyed white stone is convincing, and it fools careful people. Lowry records a buyer who paid for a turquoise necklace at a well-known Santa Fe store and later learned it was dyed howlite; the manager replaced it immediately[4] — which is the useful half of the anecdote. Most reputable dealers want the correction made.

What to look for: dyed magnesite and howlite tend toward an even, flat, slightly chalky blue with the color concentrated in the matrix veining rather than in the body of the stone — because the dye travels through the porous seams first. Natural turquoise runs the other way, with color in the stone and the matrix reading as host rock. If a "turquoise" is uniformly, cheerfully blue across a large piece at a small price, weigh that.

Your real protection is paper. The FTC guidelines call for a written guarantee carrying the seller's name, address, telephone number and date, and describing the grade of what you bought[5]. Ask for it in writing. A dealer who will put the stone's identity and treatment on paper is a dealer worth returning to — and a dealer who won't has told you what you needed to know.

A note on accuracy. We strive for accuracy, and this page is continuously updated with new information from the artists, their families, and the community. Corrections welcome.

A grid of twelve turquoise close-ups: green stones veined with brown and black, bright blue stones with dark and metallic-flecked matrix, and pale blue stones with almost no matrix
For comparison — natural turquoise and its characteristic matrix. Magnesite is a softer, porous white stone that is dyed and sold to resemble stones like these; telling the two apart is what this page is about. Turquoise shown for contrast, not magnesite.

Sources

  1. Lowry & Lowry, Turquoise: The World Story of a Fascinating Gemstone (2010), p. 118
  2. Lowry & Lowry, Turquoise: The World Story of a Fascinating Gemstone (2010), p. 209
  3. Bedinger, Indian Silver, p. 202
  4. Lowry & Lowry, Turquoise: The World Story of a Fascinating Gemstone (2010), p. 214
  5. Lowry & Lowry, Turquoise: The World Story of a Fascinating Gemstone (2010), pp. 193–194 (summarizing FTC guidance)

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From the T.Skies Journal