Hello from Denmark

Hello from Denmark.
I just happen to like turquoise, as well as corals and opals. Can’t say I’m a collector, I collect uranium-glass, but if a niece piece of vintage turqoise jewellery turns up when hunting at flea-markets and thrift-shops, I’ll probably buy it…
Most of the turquoise found here is Chinese or Tibetan, imported back in the 1960’s and 70’s when turquoise was hugely popular.
Occasionally, Persian and even American turquoise can be found.
I’ve attached some photos so you can see what can be found here…





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Welcome to Turquoise People. Thanks for sharing the images it is always nice to see turquoise pictures.

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Welcome! We love turquoise; glad that across the ocean you do also. I have a friend from Finland, and I have always been interested in the Scandinavian countries (I know you are not next to Finland but the whole area looks beautiful!).

Just curious, but what is uranium glass?

Addendum to this: I googled it. Very interesting!

Thanks…
Uranium glass is glass where the colour comes from adding Uranium oxide.
Most of it is from canary-yellow to green,
but it can also be blue, pink and other colours. “Burmese glass” ( an American invention)
is also uranium glass.
It is fluorescent under UV-light,
and slightly radioactive(!).
On a sunny day it also glows slightly.

The earliest known use of uranium to colour glass dates back to 79AD, a glass-mosaic in a Roman villa outside Naples, Italy, was found to have yellow glass-pieces containing
1% uranium oxide.

It is also known as “vaseline-glass”
and was very popular during The Depression,
in so-called “depression glass”.
It almost disappeared when the Manhattan Project started, because the US Government suddenly had a use for uranium.
It can still be found in modern art-glass, fex in glass from Murano, Venice, but like many other metals used to colour glass, uranium being a heavy metal, is rather toxic, besides being slightly radioactive, so modern workplace safety regulations limits the use.

Incidentally, you can also find uranium glass pieces that are Turquoise-blue, they are quite rare, so far I only have one piece,
the little vase with enamel-painted flowers to the right in the photos…


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I ran into a guy in the basement of the antiques mall in town who was shining his flashlight on the depression-glass shelves.
“looking for mice?”
" lol-nope,check this out"
he did a small lecture(yeah,I like learning stuff) & also said the price went up about 15%

oh,btw…diamonds can do that,too. price goes down the same percentage.

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Wow, amazing! Thank you for the info, fascinating. I’d never heard of it. I found some information online, but you explained it better.

:blush:
I do the same, a UV-lamp with 365nm wavelength, actually a bit to low for uranium because some glass with lead will fluoresce enough to confuse you a bit.
I started to put pretty much everything under the blacklight and noticed that some diamonds
(approx. 30% of them) are fluorescent.
A faint fluorescence can actually improve the perceived colour of a diamond,
and you can save 15-18%.
A blacklight is also great for seeing repairs.

Rubies look amazing under a blacklight,
as does Tugtupit. Opals also fluoresce.
A blacklight is also very good for identifying,
and even finding, Amber, or “Freyas Tears” as it is called in Nordic Mythology.
We Danes love amber and here it is found along the sea-shore, not mined, or the fishermen catch the huge pieces in their nets.
Unlike Polish and/or “Russian/Baltic” amber,
Danish amber is rarely heat-treated,
we prefer to just shape and polish it, keeping it close to it’s natural state.

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wow,I just got a “pro” level loupe that has UV & LED light! hadn’t considered that aspect-gonna be more fun than I’d thought. :smiley:

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Love Czech glass jewelry and amber as well. I have a couple of Russian amber necklaces but now I will have too look for untreated Danish Amber.

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What i wouldnt give for a piece of Persian Turquoise! Love the white Coral. I have a few vintage pieces from the 70’s but have never seen a strand like you have, really nice!! Im going to make a necklace using my white Coral and some Turquoise. Problem is Coral is dense and heavy, then you add some stones…and well im not wearing it swimming. Lol. Welcome, nice to meet you, I’m Kimberly

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Their is some really nice Amber coming out of Columbia now.

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