Variscite Jewelry

Humans have made adornments (including jewelry) using variscite for thousands of years.  This stone can be found in many locations around the world, but Utah is the main source of gem-quality variscite.  This highly desirable natural stone can also be found in other locations out West, including Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Northern Mexico (near the AZ border)… making variscite a great stone for use in Western Jewelry!   Variscite is often confused with turquoise, but there is a distinct difference in the chemical composition of the two stones.  The biggest difference is copper  – turquoise has it, but variscite doesn’t.   Overall, variscite is less available than even turquoise.  Variscite is, in general, a softer stone than is turquoise.  Following that, high-grade gem-quality Variscite is even much more rare than high-grade turquoise (however, interestingly, a great variscite stone would not command quite the price of comparable quality turquoise stone).

Although turquoise is mostly blue-green, having a very wide range of intense blues, greener blues, blueish green stones, and fairly intense greens… variscite stones can range from a pale mint green appearance to a deep emerald green colored stone.  So we almost only see greens in variscite stones (not much blues).  This is due to the lack of the copper element that turquoise has, as well as the addition of small traces of either the vanadium or chromium element in variscite that helps provide the greener color.

No matter how you try to  analyze it, a beautiful variscite stone is still beautiful… and a beautiful stone is ALWAYS the foundation of gorgeous Western jewelry!