Lorraine Cate (pronounced cah TAY) works only the best quality Kingman and Sleeping Beauty turquoise, fashioning her beads by hand and drilling her own nuggets. She carefully selects her raw materials and miraculously turns them into the instruments of her expression of traditional Santo Domingo beadmaking and stringing. Though she initially learned her craft from her mother, she has spent years working with and assisting her renowned heishi-making uncle Joe Cate (see Joe's work), deceased in February 2007.

These are chunky, angular nuggets of rich blue Kingman turquoise strung with Lorraine's handmade baby olive shell heishi. In the center of the necklace, a large, nodular nugget is suspended as a pendant by a Sterling wire wrap. These wonderfully color-matched nuggets were carefully sorted for their graduated size and beautifully tumbled to a polished glow. Like 99% of the drilled turquoise used in Indian jewelry today, this is stabilized turquoise. The stabilization process hardens the stone and eliminates problems of fracturing which would occur when drilling natural turquoise. This process also renders the stone color fast so that the color will not change over time.

This necklace is strung on polyurethane-sleeved braided steel wire for durability. The polyurethane coating allows the nuggets to slide easily on the strand so the necklace moves naturally with your body and while the steel wire adds durability to the necklace, the polyurethane coating prevents the nuggets from being chipped by the friction of the steel wire directly on the stone.

Kingman nuggets: 5/8" to 1 1/4" across; 3/8" to 3/4" running length

Nugget pendant: 1 3/8" x 1 1/4" x 1"

Baby olive shell heishi: 1/8" diameter

Total weight: 9.3 ounces

Length: 18 1/2" + pendant nugget