Product Description
By Artist Michael Grant Lanning, Castle Dome turquoise hand-crafted beads are accented by eight Castle Dome turquoise pendants each finished with a tiny diamond. The turquoise used for this lovely necklace was mined in 1962. The gold used was alloyed by the artist using a 1oz. Canadian coin. A total of about 160 hours went into the making of the necklace. PLEASE CALL FOR PRICE
Turquoise jewelry artist, Michael Grant Lanning, grew up in Phoenix and relocated to Northern Arizona in the 1980’s. He began learning his craft from Yaqui-Spanish jeweler, Danny Romero, in the early eighties and has worked as a jeweler ever since. Michael is the son of Sedona’s Peggy Lanning of Lanning Gallery fame, so the art runs in his family.
Michael’s strength and love is making beads out of natural material. Michael says that he has made over 300,000 stone beads in his life, cutting, drilling and polishing each one by hand. Although his love is making beads, he also makes wonderful gold and silver jewelry, preferring to use gold and silver coins for his jewelry. All metal work he does is either hand-fabricated or tufa cast where he carves the tufa and pours the gold or silver the hand hammers to the desired shape. Michael prefers more primitive tools to high tech ones which can be more difficult but he enjoys the effort it takes. One pendant can take him 12 hours to make. Michael uses only high- grade natural materials and very often knows the miner of the turquoise he uses and the year it was mined.
Michael takes great care and time with his jewelry and it shows in his beautiful finished work.
