Al had a hobby.
He had been a 5th grade school teacher, postmaster, served in
the Air Core in WW II and was part of the National Guard for 30 years. Actually he had various hobbies but the
one that gave me the privilege of collaborating with him was the hobby of
collecting turquoise and making jewelry.
From family remembrances he collected turquoise from open air mines in
New Mexico the summer of 1951.
From the color and composition of the stones I think that they are from
the Santa Rita (for most of the single stones) and Tyrone mines (for some of
the nuggets). Both of these mines
are near the Gila National Forest reserve in New Mexico.
The heirs presented to me 24 unset stones, all cut and
polished; about 50% backed with Devcon, which already indicates a certain
expertise in working with stones.
The backing is added to the stone rough to consolidate a thin or fragile
specimen so that it can be cut and polished. There were also 41 turquoise nuggets, numerous small pieces
of coral branches and a horseshoe pendant, 2 bolo tie bases with three tips, a
half finished belt buckle and a small mounting for a piece of turquoise. And there was also a bag of
silver wire, beads, links, sheet and other preformed shapes.
I know little or nothing about stone cutting and
consolidating but I was positively impressed by the silversmithing of this
determined hobbyist. And so
I began to collaborate with him and his heirs. The children’s desire was that every family member would
have a piece of turquoise mounted in sterling silver – Al’s wife, an aunt,
daughters, grandchildren, great grandchildren, a good friend and myself.
I felt that my first obligation was to render functional and
nicely finished the objects that Al had begun and not completed. Again, I was impressed with the
technical skill of Al as I handled heavy pieces on which he had soldered thin
walled bezels without meltdown or fire scale.
All of the settings that I did are handmade and
one-of-a-kind. The techniques used
range from lost wax casting, fabrication and fold forming. As this is natural, non-stabilized
turquoise it is somewhat fragile and therefore I lined all of the holes of the
nuggets with silver tubing so that the stringing material (in this case silver
wire) does not come into contact with and does not abrade the turquoise.
I live and work in Italy and Al’s family is in the US. Generally I get back to the US once a
year so I had a year to complete this project. When I would get a jewelry order here I would get the order
out and then apply myself to the turquoise cache. As I do only custom jewelry the final client is a person that
I have seen or heard about and I think about them as I do the design, work the
metal and prepare the setting for the stones. I had been given the name of every family member and some of
them had been described for physical or personality characteristics. So I spent a lot of time that year thinking
about the people in the family.
After the project was finished, a son-in-law of Al mentioned
that Al was colorblind, not the normal red-green colorblind. Al saw only in black, white and shades
of gray. When we solder we observe
closely the color of the metal to determine how hot it is. How did Al solder? How did Al distinguish a piece of turquoise
from the surrounding pebbles and dirt?
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