Turquoise

The name is a centuries-old case of mistaken identity. The turquoise that medieval Europe prized came chiefly from Persia, from the mines near Nishapur, worked for thousands of years and still the reference for the even, robin’s-egg blue against which all other turquoise is judged. But the stone travelled west through Anatolia, and Venetian merchants bought it in Turkish bazaars. So the French named it for the last hands it passed through: pierre turquoise, the Turkish stone.

Persia called the stone pirouzeh: victory. Turkey was the waypoint, not the source, yet the name it lent has outlasted every empire on the route: turquesa, Türkis, turkos, nearly every language that borrowed the French carries Turkey in the word.

HAS was founded by a Turk, which makes this the house’s signature stone: a stone defined less by where it was born than by the journey it made.