Neel Naz - Turquoise and Mother of Pearl Silver Earrings
From the Jahan collection by Orah Jewels and Crafts, Neel Naz is a pair of silver drop earrings set with turquoise and mother of pearl, drawing its color story directly from the glazed tile work of the Shah Jahan Mosque in Thatta, where cobalt blue, turquoise and white tiles cover ninety three domes in one of the most elaborate displays of tile craft in the subcontinent.
Turquoise is a hydrated phosphate of copper and aluminum, its sky blue produced by the copper locked inside its structure while trace iron gives some stones a faint green cast at the edges. The turquoise in Neel Naz is sourced from Iran, home to the Neyshabur mines in Khorasan province, the source that has supplied the world's finest turquoise for over two thousand years and the same Persian trade network that carried turquoise glaze into Sindh for the mosque's own tile work in the seventeenth century. Turquoise is porous and responds to the oils of skin over years of wear, so the stone in Neel Naz will deepen gradually with use rather than stay static.
Paired against the turquoise is mother of pearl, the nacre an oyster lays down in fine repeating layers of aragonite to smooth and protect the inside of its own shell. Its shifting luster of white, silver and faint pink comes from structural color, the layers thin enough to diffract light rather than reflect it outright, the same optical principle that produces the sheen on a soap bubble. Orah sources this mother of pearl from Gwadar on the Makran Coast, a stretch of Balochistan's shoreline that has supplied shell material to traders on the Arabian Sea for centuries.
At 1.6 inches, Neel Naz sits close to the ear rather than swinging free, letting the cool blue of the turquoise and the pale luster of the mother of pearl read as one continuous surface rather than two competing stones, a compact pairing built for everyday wear rather than occasion only. Made in Lahore at the Orah Jewels and Crafts facility. One pair.
Stones: Natural Turquoise (Iran) and Mother of Pearl (Gwadar, Makran Coast)
Metal: Sterling Silver
Size: 1.6 Inches
Weight: 13.66 g