Vintage Shube Sterling Silver Turquoise Southwest Teardrop Drop Dangle Earrings

Shube sterling silver teardrop drop earrings set with oval turquoise cabochons in the Southwest tradition. Each drop is a pear shaped frame outlined in a scalloped border of rounded silver bumps that runs the full perimeter, giving the edge a soft beaded rhythm rather than a hard line. The turquoise sits low in the wide end of the teardrop, a smooth domed oval held in a plain bezel that wraps the stone completely, and the color is a clean medium blue with occasional dark matrix breaking the surface. Above the stone the frame opens into negative space, with a single curved silver wave sweeping up through the gap toward the narrow point, so the top half of the drop is as much air as metal. Each drop hangs from a jump ring on a French hook ear wire, and the backs carry the Shube's maker's mark alongside STERLING.

That mark is the find here. Shube's Manufacturing, Inc. was a hand crafted silver house operating out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and it ran for more than three decades before the Hoeweler Group of Cincinnati acquired it and renamed it Shube's Inc. The same parent company owns South Dakota Gold, the recognized icon of the Black Hills gold category, which put Shube's under the same roof as one of the most established names in American regional jewelry. Their earliest registered trademark shows first use in commerce in 1980, placing the company's working life squarely in the decades when Albuquerque was the production center for Southwest silver, and signed pieces from that era are what collectors in this category actually hunt for rather than the unmarked import work that floods the same shape.

The design itself is pure Southwest logic. All the visual mass sits in the lower third where the stone and bezel are, while the open top keeps the earring from reading as a solid slab, and the scalloped border carries light all the way around the outline so the shape holds its definition against hair or skin. The bright unbroken bezel is what makes the blue read as blue instead of washing out, and it armors the edge of a stone far softer than most buyers expect.

These swing freely on the hooks and move with the head, light enough for all day wear. Arrives packaged and ready to gift or add to your collection.

Verifications:
Sterling silver has been verified using JSP Silver Testing Solution.
Turquoise has been verified using a Presidium Gem Tester II.

Details:
Designer: Shube's Manufacturing
Origin: Albuquerque New Mexico
Metal: Sterling Silver
Hallmarks: Shube's Maker's Mark, STERLING
Stone: Turquoise
Stone Cut: Oval Cabochon
Setting Style: Bezel
Design: Southwest Teardrop
Earring Style: Drop Dangle
Ear Wire: French Hook
Condition: Excellent estate condition

Fun Facts:
Shube's Manufacturing built hand crafted silver jewelry in Albuquerque, New Mexico for more than thirty years before being acquired by the Hoeweler Group of Cincinnati and renamed Shube's Inc., joining the same family of companies as South Dakota Gold, the longstanding icon of the Black Hills gold category.
New Mexico sits on one of the oldest turquoise mining districts in North America at Cerrillos, worked by Ancestral Puebloan peoples centuries before European contact, with stone from those mines turning up in trade goods as far south as central Mexico.