Super Rare King Manassa Turquoise Gumball Necklace Santo Domingo

Our King’s Manassa Turquoise Gumball Necklace is the kind of discovery that comes along once in a great while. In all of Jean Marie’s years traveling the Southwest, visiting artists, and seeking out extraordinary Native American jewelry, she has never encountered another piece like it. Handmade by a highly accomplished female Kewa artisan whose work has been exhibited at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York, this remarkable necklace is composed of substantial rounded King’s Manassa turquoise beads in moss green, sage, ochre, caramel, and flashes of blue-green.

Jean Marie thinks of them as the most exceptional cowgirl pearls—earthy, elegant, powerful, and far more interesting than anything conventional. Every sphere is entirely individual, alive with painterly natural matrix across its polished surface. The very idea of assembling a coordinated strand of gum ball beads of this size is exceptional: it requires an unusual amount of beautiful rough turquoise, extraordinary patience, and the mastery to shape each bead by hand without sacrificing the character of the stone. It is a singular necklace, unlikely to be encountered again.

King’s Manassa turquoise comes from the historic King mine near Manassa, Colorado, and is especially recognized for green-to-blue-green coloration intertwined with golden and brown matrix. Fine natural material is increasingly difficult to encounter in quantity, with production limited rather than large-scale. Creating gumball beads of this generous size makes the material more exceptional still: each piece requires sufficient rough to be individually cut, drilled through its center, patiently ground into a rounded form, then smoothed and polished while preserving the character of the stone. A strand of coordinated, substantial beads demands an unusual amount of turquoise. Our artisan used rough from her stockpile and made this piece just for us!

There is also a deeply personal story behind the maker. Jean Marie has developed a close relationship with this female artisan and her family over the years and makes a point of seeking out and patronizing her work, particularly because she creates one of a kind extraordinarily labor-intensive pieces. Having learned jewelry making from her mother and grandmother, the artist brings generations of knowledge to a style that remains distinctly her own. She once shared with Jean Marie that she prefers to create only when she is in a happy frame of mind, believing that something of her own spirit enters the jewelry she makes. It is a sentiment Jean Marie has never forgotten, and one that makes acquiring each of her rare creations feel especially personal.

Worn alone against a simple white shirt, silk tunic, or kaftan, its remarkable colors become the entire statement; layered with silver, it takes on a more collected Southwestern character. Jean Marie particularly loves pieces such as this one because they cannot be separated from the person who made them. Rare material, painstaking handwork, and an intensely individual artistic voice come together in a one-of-a-kind necklace—wearable sculpture with a story that extends far beyond the stones themselves.

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Made in New Mexico, USA

Length 17.5"

Weight 70 gr

Stone size 10-10.5mm