$40 Blue Turquoise Slab Earrings

These earrings were made by Ronald Chavez from Kingman turquoise. They are 2 inches long with the wire by 1 inch wide.

Simple and bold: two oval slabs of Kingman turquoise, from Kingman, Arizona. The stone is a soft aqua that leans toward green, crossed by a lacy pattern of olive-green and tan matrix, so each slab has its own markings and the two match without being exact copies. They are polished smooth and hang flat from hook ear wires, each fixed with a wrapped loop. With no inlay or extra beads, the turquoise is the whole design, and the pair works as well with jeans as with something dressier.

Most of Ronald Chavez's work in the shop is inlay, or turquoise carved into feathers and leaves; this pair leaves the Kingman stone plain and lets the matrix carry the design. He lives with his family at Santo Domingo Pueblo, where before he retired he was Mayordomo of the village's irrigation ditch, and his pieces come to the shop directly from him.