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Southwestern sterling silver jewelry in the style of the American southwest. Influenced by the Navajo. Includes turquoise, spiny oyster, and coral cabochons. Handmade and of excellent quality.
Southwestern styled jewelry is not just for cowboys and Indians. This highly prized jewelry style is now found the world over. From ranch to boardroom the heavily worked silver featuring the stones mentioned above are in demand. This rugged yet elegant design looks macho on the rodeo cowboy or elegant on a business women.
Spiny Oyster shell has been used for centuries in jewelry. It can be red, orange, purple and yellow.
Our spiny oyster comes from the coast of Ecuador and is of the highest quality. Spondylus Princeps, known as the "thorny oyster" or "spiny oyster" has interest among Archaelogists, they held important ceremonial and ritual significance to many of the prehistoric cultures of South, Central and North America.
The earliest known illustration of spondylus diving in South America comes from drawings on pottery and murals during the Early Intermediate Period [~200 BCE-CE 600]: and the images probably were of people diving off the coast of Ecuador.
https://www.thoughtco.com/precolumbian-use-of-the-thorny-oyster-170123
" Turquoise is an opaque mineral that occurs in beautiful hues of blue, bluish green, green, and yellowish green. It has been treasured as a gemstone for thousands of years. Isolated from one another, the ancient people of Africa, Asia, South America and North America independently made turquoise one of their preferred materials for producing gemstones, inlay, and small sculptures.