I guess Persian can look as different as any other type, and isn’t it known more for its blue-ness (absence of matrix)? Could this be that? I bought it from the man who made it, and he said that the turquoise that he cut it from was bought at an estate sale. An Iranian woman he knew that was from a town known for this turquoise identified it as looking just like what she commonly saw coming from the mines where she was from.
What is the group’s opinion?
Yes, we see the pieces with matrix because we have a market for it here, there it was considered inferior to those pure blues. My guess is it is not a piece of Persian.
@Jason thank you for the info. I figured that was probably a stretch. It’s a nice, bright piece, though!
Wonder what it may be?
It is always difficult to tell when it doesn’t have those classic characteristics. I have had a few stones with this look that the cutter called Blue Gem, definitely has a different look than classic Blue Gem but he was reputable.
Looks like natural sleeping beauty with some oil contamination which has caused the more porous areas of the stone to disproportionately discolor. This can be deliberate, an attempt to deepen the color, or accidental. In this case it looks like the stone may have been set or inlaid semi rough in the setting, and then sanded and buffed even with the surrounding silver. If greasy bobbing compound was used to smooth prior to polishing (which I suspect is what happened), the oils would have absorbed into the porous areas of the stone.
We used to cut quite a bit of natural sleeping beauty in the workshop, and this is something we’d see every now and then when our finishers got a little sloppy, and used yellow bobbing compound instead of Zam to smooth after sanding.
