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50 years of carefully curated genuine coral, turquoise, mother of pearl raw materials & jewelry…

10/29/2026

Sleeping Beauty turquoise comes from Globe, Arizona — prized for a solid, soft blue with little or no matrix, ranging from deep royal to light sky blue.

The site was originally mined for copper and gold; turquoise became the focus over the last four decades, with miners working leased sections of the dumps. The mine is now closed.

That clear, matrix-free blue is the reason Sleeping Beauty is so often compared to old Persian turquoise, and why it has long been the stone most preferred in European markets — particularly for cameo work.

See the collection: https://traderoots.com/Turquoise/Turquoise_Mines/Sleeping_Beauty_Turquoise/

10/27/2026

The red coral we work with is Corallium rubrum, gathered in the Mediterranean and introduced to the New World by the Spaniards. It is typical of the Mediterranean and does not grow off the western coast of Mexico, nor in the Gulf of California.

Its meaning is not simple. Red coral has always combined myth and magic — its bright red color fascinated people in the East and West alike, and it long stood for procreative force and a link with the divine.

In the Southwest, the readings differ: one Navajo shaman held that coral has no ceremonial significance and is used purely as ornament, while other accounts describe it as protection from bad medicine, envy, and jealousy. What is consistent is that coral, like all things coming from water, is treated as a sacred, life-giving symbol by people living in a semi-arid country.

Our rough runs from dark salmon to bright tomato red, and we carry it rough, as cabochons, as beads, and in finished jewelry — sourced at origin since 1970.

Read the coral story: https://traderoots.com/Coral/The_Coral_Story/

10/24/2026

The inner nacreous layer of a mollusk shell, with its iridescent play of color, is mother of pearl — one of the earliest materials people used for adornment.

The black shell is the one that surprises people: turn it in the light, and it goes green, then peacock, then near-violet.

TradeRoots carries black mother of pearl as whole shells, rough and polished, cut strips and pieces, and discs from 16 mm up to 45 mm. The 45 mm discs are thick enough that we only get one out of each shell.

Shop mother of pearl: https://traderoots.com/Pearl_Shell/Mother_of_Pearl/

10/22/2026

Fretboard markers, headstock logos, rosettes, furniture, frames — inlay work asks for material cut flat, even, and to an exact thickness. That’s what we cut.

White and black mother of pearl in precision-cut pieces, cut strips, and chunky nubs. Abalone and green snail shell.

Kingman turquoise inlay material — a soft blue that’s hard enough to hold together.

Pearl shell is ecologically harvested from self-replenishing beds around the Philippines, directly from the source since 1970.
Explore the shell: https://traderoots.com/Pearl_Shell/

10/20/2026

Kingman turquoise comes from the Mineral Park Mining District in Arizona. The range is wide — light to dark blue, with a matrix that can be white, light brown, or black.

Pictured is the one collectors chase: deep blue shot through with fine black webbing. That material came out of the ground in the 1970s and hasn’t been seen since.

TradeRoots carries Kingman in birdseye slabs, nuggets, spiderweb, inlay material, and old 1970s Turquoise Mountain stone.

See the collection: https://traderoots.com/Turquoise/Turquoise_Mines/Kingman_Turquoise/

10/16/2026

Royston isn’t one mine. It’s a district in Nevada made up of three: Bunker Hill, Oscar Wehrend, and the main producer, the Royal Blue.

Royston is known for colors ranging from deep green to rich, light blues, set off by a heavy brown matrix. Most of what comes out of the ground now is processed into finished cabochons by the Ottison family, with very little rough released to the market — which is why the price of rough Royston has climbed steadily in recent years.

See the collection: https://traderoots.com/Turquoise/Turquoise_Mines/Royston_Turquoise/

10/14/2026

Raw turquoise rarely looks like the stone you see set in silver. Four things to look at:
Color. Sky blue to deep royal blue to green — and the greens are chemistry, not quality. Carico Lake’s clear spring green is due to zinc in the ground.

1. Matrix. The webbing and veining are the host rock the turquoise formed in. Brown, golden, white, or black, and different in every district.

2. Hardness. It varies by mine — Fox runs about 4.5, Cripple Creek up to 6 on the Mohs scale. Harder stone takes a higher polish.

3. Porosity. Softer, more porous material is often stabilized before cutting. Natural means untreated, and it is worth knowing which you’re buying.

4. Pictured: Evans high grade from Baja, California — high blue with brown matrix through green with gold. The mine was covered up in the 1990s, so there is very little of it left on the market.

Browse rough by mine: https://traderoots.com/Turquoise/Turquoise_Mines/

10/12/2026

Monday is Indigenous Peoples’ Day — observed on the second Monday in October and an official New Mexico state holiday since 2019.

TradeRoots has worked with Native artists of the Southwest since 1970, first by supplying the raw materials — shell, coral, amber, turquoise — sourced at origin for jewelry-making and fe**sh carving, and now by commissioning handmade traditional Navajo jewelry using the finest domestic turquoise and Mediterranean coral.

Pictured: a five-stone Sleeping Beauty bracelet by Randy White, 22 carats of natural stone in sterling silver. The Sleeping Beauty mine is closed, which makes that clear sky blue very collectible.

See the jewelry: https://traderoots.com/Jewelry_Neckwear/

10/08/2026

A fe**sh is an animal carving, usually in stone, which houses the spirit or supernatural qualities of that animal. Usually — but not always.

This wolf is carved from mother of pearl by Bernard Homer Jr. (Zuni), grandson of the famed Zuni carver and silversmith Leekya Deyouse. It carries a power pack of Carico Lake turquoise and Sea of Japan coral with a lepidolite arrow, and its eyes are inlaid jet. Homer also worked in green sea snail, freshwater mussel shell, fluorite, and azurite.

TradeRoots produces and procures Zuni fe**shes and Ramah Navajo carvings in gemstone and shell materials, directly from their source.

See the collection: https://traderoots.com/Fetishes_Carvings/

10/06/2026

Fox turquoise comes from near Lander County, Nevada. Indigenous people found large nuggets in that ground in prehistoric times; the area was first discovered for contemporary mining in the early 1900s, and the mine was developed by Dowell Ward in the 1940s out of the old Cortez claims.

Over the years, the same deposit has been marketed under four names — Fox, White Horse, Green Tree, and Smith. The stone runs a soft sky blue, sometimes with a subtle water-marked matrix, through blue-green to green, at a hardness of 4.5.
Fox is one of the Nevada mines we carry alongside Carico Lake, Blue Gem, Pilot Mountain, Damale, Crescent Valley, and Number 8 — more Nevada turquoise, from more named mines, than almost anyone.

See what’s currently available: https://traderoots.com/Turquoise/Turquoise_Mines/Fox_Turquoise/

Address

411 Paseo De Peralta
Santa Fe, NM
87501

Telephone

+15059828168

Website

https://www.TradeRoots.com/

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