The Turquoise Mustang Story — How Len and Joyce Built Something Lasting

The road to Turquoise Mustang started in Albuquerque in 1969, when Len bought his first piece of turquoise. He was not thinking about starting a business. He was thinking about the stone — what it looked like, where it came from, what made one piece different from another. That curiosity never stopped. Everything that came after grew from it.

Len and Joyce built Turquoise Mustang from that beginning into one of the most respected Western jewelry retailers in the country — a business with direct artist relationships spanning multiple generations, genuine knowledge of the stones and the tradition, and a commitment to honest dealing that has defined every transaction since the beginning.

The Foundation: Direct Artist Relationships

The most important thing Turquoise Mustang has to offer is not inventory. It is knowledge. And the most valuable knowledge accumulated over the years is knowledge of people — the artists whose work we carry, whose hallmarks we recognize, whose techniques we understand well enough to describe accurately and evaluate honestly.

Artists like Delbert Gordon, Calvin Martinez, and Philander Begay are not catalog entries to us. They are people we know, whose families we know, whose work we have followed across decades of development. When we describe a Delbert Gordon cuff as museum-quality, it is not marketing language. It is assessment grounded in decades of direct context.

The Stones We Know

Len has held more turquoise than almost anyone in the retail jewelry market. The knowledge that informs The Mine Files — what makes Royston different from Kingman, what birdseye matrix actually looks like, how to distinguish natural from stabilized material by feel and appearance — is not academic knowledge. It is the accumulated sensory experience of handling thousands of individual stones over decades.

This knowledge matters because turquoise is a category where learning by handling is the only real teacher. Books can tell you the geology. Only time with the material teaches you to recognize it.

Birdseye Kingman Cuff by Delbert Gordon — the kind of piece Len has known how to identify, source, and value for decades. The knowledge behind that assessment is what Turquoise Mustang is built on.

Mustang Silver Pearls: Building Something New

The development of Mustang Silver Pearls represents the other side of what Turquoise Mustang does: not just sourcing and selling the tradition's work, but contributing to it. The decision to engineer a heavier, more durably strung sterling silver pearl strand — and to back it with a lifetime restringing guarantee — came from years of watching standard pearl strands kink, break, and disappoint the customers who wore them.

Mustang Silver Pearls are made to the standard that decades of experience said was the right standard. Heavier beads. Better wire. A guarantee that means what it says.

What Has Not Changed

The store has moved. The web has changed everything about how people find us. The market for Western jewelry has grown and shifted in ways nobody could have predicted. But the core of what we do — buy directly from artists we know, sell with accurate attribution, stand behind every piece with the confidence of people who know what they are talking about — has not changed at all.

Len is still slinging stones. We are still here. And the tradition we have spent decades honoring is still going strong.

Browse the collection: Native American Collection • Meet Our Artists • The Mine Files. Questions? Contact us directly.