0.72 ctw Pear Cabochon Turquoise & Diamond Climber Earrings – 14k Yellow Gold

14k yellow gold. 12 pear-shape cabochon turquoise. Diamonds, 0.72 ctw. Wearable climbing or dropping.

Turquoise is cut as a cabochon — smooth and domed rather than faceted — and that is not a style decision. Facets exist to bounce light around inside a transparent stone and send it back to your eye. Turquoise is opaque. Light does not travel through it, so facets would give you nothing but edges. A polished dome is the only cut that shows what turquoise actually has: its color and its surface.

It is also the oldest gem material humans have worn. Turquoise beads have been recovered from burials thousands of years old, from Egypt to the American Southwest, which is longer than almost anything else in a jewelry box can claim.

The twelve pears run in graduated lines that can be worn two ways — climbing up along the ear, or reversed to fall as a drop. That flexibility is genuinely rare, and it makes one pair behave like two.

Yellow gold is not optional here. Turquoise reads blue-green, and gold sits opposite it in warmth; the two intensify each other. It is one of the most reliable color pairings in all of jewelry, and every culture that mined turquoise arrived at it independently.

Care — read this one

Turquoise is the softest stone in this collection by a wide margin: 5 to 6 on Mohs, softer than window glass and softer than the quartz dust in ordinary household air. It is also porous, which means it absorbs. Perfume, lotion, hairspray, sunscreen and skin oils can all discolor it permanently, and heat can change its color.

Most turquoise on the market is stabilized with resin to reduce that porosity — a standard, disclosed treatment that makes the stone far more wearable. It does not make it invulnerable.

So: put these on last, after everything else. Wipe them with a dry soft cloth only. Never an ultrasonic cleaner, never steam, never a chemical cleaner of any kind. Store them alone. Handled that way, turquoise stays beautiful for generations — the pieces in museums are proof.