Rare Sleeping Beauty Turquoise Double Strand Graduated Necklace Santo Domingo

Our Sleeping Beauty Turquoise Double Strand Graduated Necklace Santo Domingo is an exquisite expression of the meticulous stonework for which Kewa (Santo Domingo) Pueblo jewelry is celebrated. Handmade by the same husband-and-wife artisan couple whose work Jean Marie has collected and supported, this necklace features two graceful strands of luminous turquoise, graduated from exceptionally fine beads near the neckline to broader discs toward the center which are delicately separated by a tiny heishi shell bead. The effect is beautifully restrained yet unmistakably luxurious: an uninterrupted sweep of brilliant Robin’s egg blue that allows the extraordinary material and precision of the handwork to speak for themselves. The Kewa people often combine turquoise with heishi shell in their pieces as they believe the shell represents water and the turquoise represents the earth - the combination resulting in a grounding influence on the wearer of the necklace.

Sleeping Beauty turquoise originates from the celebrated mine near Globe, Arizona, and is particularly prized for its clean, intense sky-blue color, frequently appearing with little visible matrix. The mine shifted its focus away from turquoise production in 2012, so the Sleeping Beauty turquoise circulating today comes from previously mined material rather than new production. This makes a necklace containing such an abundance of closely coordinated material increasingly special, particularly when the stones have been selected to create the remarkable continuity of color seen here.

Its apparent simplicity disguises an enormous amount of handwork. Each piece of turquoise must be cut, drilled, ground, smoothed, and polished, then carefully graduated so the beads increase almost imperceptibly in scale as they approach the center. Historic Kewa necklaces in the Smithsonian collection document these same traditions of grinding, drilling, polishing, and stringing turquoise by hand. Here, the double-strand construction makes that precision even more demanding: both rows must fall effortlessly together while maintaining their individual rhythm and graceful proportion.

Jean Marie personally selected this necklace from the husband-and-wife artisans with whom she has developed a close and meaningful relationship. She loves patronizing their work because she understands that behind its elegance are hours of patient, exacting labor and generations of jewelry-making knowledge. What captivated her here was the purity of the turquoise, the sophisticated graduation, and the quiet drama of two perfectly balanced strands. Entirely handmade and impossible to duplicate exactly, it is a refined heirloom piece of wearable Southwestern art—timeless, collectible, and made extraordinary by both its increasingly finite material and the hands that transformed it.

Length 19" with sterling silver clasp included

Stone Size 2mm-6.6mm

Made in New Mexico, USA.