Author: David Federman

Three times since 1971, a sizeable Burma sapphire once owned by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and now named after him has come up for auction at Sotheby’s. All three times the stone was bought by the same New York fine gem specialist, Ralph Esmerian. So great is his esteem for the 62.02-carat emerald cut that he paid $2.85 million ($46,000 per carat) to re-acquire it the last time the gem hit the behemoth hit the block at a St. Moritz sale in February 1988.That was no top dollar for a Burma sapphire then.And now.Come to think of it, so was…

Just a few years ago the presence of numerous Thai rough buyers in Sri Lanka’s sapphire fields was cause for jitters among that country’s gem dealers. At the same time, their presence at Australia’s and Nigeria’s sapphire areas was cause for joy among miners there. After all, nobody bought anywhere near as much rough sapphire or paid higher prices for it than the Thais. They could afford to outbid all others because they knew how to treat heat what they bought to coax the best color out of it.Today the army of Thai rough buyers stationed in Sri Lanka, Australia…

David Stanley Epstein, one of the best known of America’s young gem cutters, recently began an experimental series of rutilated quartz carvings in his workshop in Teofilo Otoni, Brazil. But he doubts the outcome of his experiments will earn him enough income to continue working with this rather abundant material. The cost of rough, higher than ever before, forces him to ask prices for his finished pieces that he is sure will meet stiff resistance. “Quartz has got a reputation for being cheap,” he says.If so, it is a reputation this particular quartz may soon escape.In the United States, where…

Tons of the stuff are mined every year, but chances are great that you won’t see a single piece of rose quartz, loose or set, in any mainstream jewelry store. The gem’s conspicuous absence from retailer showcases raises the following questions: Where does it all go? Who sells it?The search for rose quartz vendors takes one into the separate world of gem and mineral distributors and retailers, just next door to the one jewelers know but running parallel to it. “I have store-owner customers who are crazy about rose quartz,” boasts importer Damian Quinn of Talisman Trading Co., San Diego,…

If pyrite is known as “fool’s gold,” then rock crystal—the clear, colorless variety of quartz—could be called “fool’s diamond.” Certainly, rock crystal fooled experts for a very long time. And explaining the differences between rock crystal and diamond kept scientists of antiquity busy. Here’s what they wound up saying and the gem world kept believing—that is, until the dawn of modern chemical analysis.According to Ann and Si Frazier in the April 1992 Lapidary Journal, the ancients divided colorless gems into two types: ripe and unripe. You can guess which was which. Ripe gems were diamonds and unripe gems were crystal…

Until a year or so ago, having exclusive distribution rights for the world’s largest chrysocolla quartz mine would have been an oddball distinction, of interest perhaps to late-night and game-show hosts looking for yuks. But with blue and green chalcedonies suddenly among the hottest rocks in custom design jewelry, this claim is no longer a laughing matter.To the contrary, it’s bringing serious attention to Michael Randall, Crystal Reflections, San Anselmo, Calif., marketer for a four-year-old mine in Mexico that he predicts by the end of 1992 will become the most productive source ever of what he calls “gem silica chrysocolla”…

Options for retirement careers and sidelines are few in Globe, Ariz., a desert town 90 miles east of Phoenix. So why not open a takeout place or pizza parlor? Globe has only 5,000 residents, that’s why. How about a tourist shop? Nah, the San Carlos Apache Indian reservation, 20 miles east of Globe, grabs most visitors.Luckily for Tyree Trobaugh, a miner who retired in 1971 at age 65, the reservation is the site of the world’s largest peridot deposit, producing, says the U.S. Bureau of Mines, at least 80%—possibly as much as 95%—of all current supply. What’s more, the Apaches,…

Tamerlane, the Mongol conqueror, Henry VIII of England and Peter the Great of Russia are among the fabled rulers who prized red spinels so much they made them crown jewel and royal regalia centerpieces. There’s just one little problem: These potentates thought their pet rocks were rubies.Luckily for the jewelers who sold, one assumes unknowingly, these sovereigns ruby stand-ins, the stones’ true identities weren’t discovered until centuries afterwards.Starting in the late 19th century, practitioners of a new science called gemology began to unmask many of the great rubies of antiquity as mimicries from other species—the most common of which by…

What’s in a name, you ask? Quite a lot when it comes to gems. Try getting excited about the likes of zoisite or grossular garnet. But rechristen these two gems as “tanzanite” and “tsavorite” respectively and you’ve done for gem marketing the equivalent of changing the name “Frances Gumm” to “Judy Garland.” “Tanzanite” and “tsavorite” are the trade names Tiffany’s taught the world to use back in 1968 and 1970 when it debuted these two East African gems to wild acclaim.So it was hardly surprising that when sugilite, a new gem from South Africa, made its American market entry in…

It is generally thought that quartz, the rock family that gives jewelers such gem staples as amethyst and black onyx, is the most common mineral on earth. Think again, some geologists say. That distinction rightfully belongs to feldspar, a rock group whose most famous gem member is moonstone.But whether or not feldspar is the most common mineral found on earth, it just might be the most common mineral found around the home—at least in America. Feldspar, both in ground-up rock and clay form, is used in numerous home and beauty products. If, for example, you’ve got five bricks in the…

In 1912 the National Association of Jewellers overhauled the birthstone list for the American market. Among the changes the group made was the selection for October. Beryl, which had for centuries been the month’s most widely accepted representative, was out, tourmaline was in.At the time, some believed commercialism was behind the jewelers’ decision. Yet we would wager the jewelers’ group was prompted in its choice by nationalism as well. From a standpoint of quality, and perhaps quantity, America was then the pre-eminent producer of tourmaline—not just California pinks but also Maine greens. And given the fact that green and golden…

If you are among those who believe that United States history begins with Christopher Columbus and not the native peoples he and his successors found here, then 1820 is the starting point and Maine the starting place of any gem mining annal for this country.Late in the fall of that year, two young boys, Elijah Hamlin and Ezekiel Holmes, spotted a green crystal lying at the base of an uprooted tree while hiking on Mt. Mica, near the town of Paris. A short distance away, the boys found a small springing of more crystals. Had not a blizzard that night…

When smuggling of tanzanite, a popular blue zoisite found only in the Merelani hills of Tanzania, got out of hand in 1990, the ensuing glut toppled prices more than 40% in less than a year. Just before New Year’s, the Tanzanian government sent troops to Merelani to evict tens of thousands of gem poachers, an action that helped stabilize the market. Next, the Ministry of Water, Energy and Minerals divided the area into four blocks—A, B, C and D—and licensed each to a different mining company. By March, things seemed headed back to normal.Then nature started playing tricks at Block…

The world has lived so long with a 2,500-plus Dow Jones average that it comes as a shock to be reminded this bellwether index for the U.S. stock market didn’t top 1,500 until 1983 and 2,000 until 1986. And when you are told that the average sank to 577 in 1973 during a recession far milder than that of 1990-92, your brain feels like a gong in a Buddhist monastery. Numbers that low are just too bad to be true.Now imagine the reaction of some minds when quoted recent prices—said to have reached $10,000 per carat—for a strain of neon-glowing…

Creation plays by very frustrating rules when it comes to pure red and orange diamonds. Yet with nearly 100 million carats of diamond mined annually, collectors of fancy colors still feel good reason to hope for a handful of stones with these two rarest of shades. So while the search for pure orange diamonds is like looking for a needle in a haystack, it is child’s play next to the grail-quest for pure red diamonds.Nature is sporting enough to provide encouraging numbers of fancy close diamonds with golden amber and fiery autumn hues, but the orange in these stones usually…

Let’s test your powers of visualization. Imagine you are holding an emerald crystal and looking down its barrel, along what is known as the C-axis. As you gaze into the piece, you notice a black- or gray-banded pattern that resembles a pie cut in six slices, each band extending from a hexagonal core to the edge of the crystal. Have you got that?OK, now imagine you are looking at the same crystal after it has been cut into a cabochon. Assuming it’s cut properly, and the material is of decent quality, you should see the same pie pattern, each wedge…

Pity lavender jade, that pink-to-purple member of jadeite’s rather extensive color family. Far rarer than this gem’s much-coveted green and white varieties, lavender jade in any but its very few ne-plus-ultra specimens is still denied the veneration and value of its sister shades by jade’s chief patrons—the Chinese, Japanese and British.Indeed, the only people with whom lavender jade has found wide favor are Americans, mostly since World War II. This has robbed many superb examples of this gem of an important sales ingredient—provenance, the documented history of any crafted object. “In auction catalogs, you are used to seeing green and…

Royal patronage has long been the cornerstone of fame for gems. Where would a sales pitch for emerald be without mention of Cleopatra? And look what talk of Nero does for amber and opal.Well, now that chrysoprase, the lovely green quartz with hues reminiscent of Prell shampoo and Granny Smith apples, is making its biggest noise in nearly two centuries, name droppers will be delighted to know this gem’s greatest patron was as royal as royal gets.Does the name “Frederick the Great” ring a bell? Born in 1712 and king of Prussia from 1740 until his death in 1786, this…

Joel Arem, who specializes in making collector markets for neglected gems, thought he knew a good thing when he saw one.The well-known author and dealer, based in Gaithersburg, Md., started what he believed was a sure-to-succeed crusade on behalf of faceted chrysoberyl, a little-known member of the gem family that boasts two of the world’s most famous phenomena stones: alexandrite (a gem that changes from green in daylight to red in artificial light) and cat’s-eye chrysoberyl (a gem that displays a single streak of light across its dome when cut as a cabochon). Arem assumed that sooner or later the…

Think of quartz and words like “commonplace” and “abundant” come to mind. That any member of this rather broad gem and mineral family could be a rarity of keen interest to connoisseurs and collectors (not to mention designers and manufacturers) seems incongruous or far-fetched.Yet Mike Pirtle had the good fortune to be witness to the discovery of just such a quartz variety during a hunting trip to the Mojave desert, at a spot 100 miles north of Los Angeles, in 1987. At the spot, he confesses, he knew nothing about gems. Luckily, his companion, seasoned rockhound Bill Nicks, did. So…

At first glance, rainbow calcite makes you feel like someone slipped you a Mickey Finn. While it is dazzling your mind, there is the nagging thought you should have your vision checked. Looking into an otherwise colorless gem, you see flashes of spectral color running closely parallel, resembling double images in a 3-D comic that don’t converge until you put on special glasses. Equally disorienting, facet edges seem stuporously out of focus.A few seconds later, when you’ve adjusted to the paranormal aesthetics of rainbow calcite, you realize that it makes perhaps the most striking first impression of any phenomenon gem.Not…

If mining company owner Rod Dallas hadn’t sent two prospectors up into the southern Mt. Diablo range to look for copper and mercury late in 1906, California might not have its state gem today.The gem is benitoite, named after the stone’s sole source of facetable material in San Benito County, Calif., near the Fresno County line. Due in part to the fact that it has only one meaningful occurrence, benitoite became California’s state gem in 1985.It is highly doubtful, however, that the gem would have been awarded such status just because of its rarity. Beauty and gemological uniqueness (it’s the…

Until 1912, the year a Jewelers of America forerunner revised this country’s birthstone list, chalcedony boasted five, and at earlier times six, spots on that enduring roster, making this broad branch of the quartz family the most heavily represented of any in the gem kingdom. Today agate, carnelian, chrysoprase and jasper are missing from the birthstone roll. Only bloodstone and sardonyx remain, but these chalcedonies function as alternates.In the case of bloodstone, March’s sole gem since the list was first codified, receiving second billing in the 20th century was a real slap in the face, part of a mainstream jewelry…

The owner of the luscious green beryl you see on the page opposite had every right in the world to sell it as emerald. It’s got chromium, the coloring agent of emerald, and that’s all this stone needs nowadays to be certified as such by European and Asian gem labs. In America, where the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) uses visual, as opposed to chemical criteria to distinguish between green beryl and emerald, the stone must reach certain tone and saturation levels to be called the latter. But even by GIA standards, this stone can be called “emerald.”Yet Joe Gill,…

In an ideal world, red beryl would be prized just for what it is. And what it is, to quote Gem and Gemology’s landmark 1984 article on this Utah stone, “is the rarest of all gem beryl.” But because this is a far-from-ideal world where hardly any jewelers, let alone consumers, have a nodding acquaintance with it, red beryl is prized for what it isn’t: emerald. Or wasn’t.Named “bixbite” in 1912 and unsellable ever since as such, a few dealers have recently found they can make mini-markets in this beryl by selling it to collectors as red emerald. Although this…

Test your gem marketing skills by solving this problem based on actual history:It’s somewhere around 1913. You work for a German mining company that has just discovered a fat pocket of stunning golden beryl (the same family to which emerald and aquamarine belong) in South West Africa (now Namibia). The problem posed by the new find is this: How do you arouse public interest in a very obscure, albeit beautiful stone? Well, first you give it a name that suggests the gem possesses a quintessential yellow color. That name: “heliodor,” a Greek-derived word that means, in effect, “sun-stroked.”Once you’ve got…

During that great 300-million-year flowering of marine life called the Paleozoic era, a squid-like animal known as the ammonite thrived in every ocean. This mollusk made its home in giant coiled shells similar to those of the chambered nautilus that we see today. Just like the dinosaurs that emerged later in this geologic age that began 500 million years ago, the ammonite eventually suffered a species wipeout.Today, ammonites are found fragilely fossilized in various shells all over the world. Usually what remains are dull-colored agatized shell imprints in a host material. This imprint shows the increasingly larger quarters the growing…

When in 1981 the gem trade got wind that ametrine, a combination of amethyst and citrine, could be concocted in the lab by heating and irradiating the warm welcome it had given this gem a year earlier became a cold shoulder.The swift reversal of fortune for this purple-yellow quartz made sense back then when revelations of what by current norms seem benign treatments still had considerable shock value. But continued ostracism isn’t justified more than 10 years later. After all, it’s kid’s stuff gemology today that when you heat amethyst, you get citrine (indeed, nearly all citrine is heated. So…

At last count, four South American neighbors—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay—are producing, at the very least, 75% of the world’s most popular affordably priced gem: amethyst. So without Latino output of this purple quartz, there would be little or no future for this jewelry mainstay. Not as a bread-and-butter stone, anyway.Nevertheless, it is Russia and Africa that capture most of the kudos for this gem as far as quality goes—even though the former is a long-inactive source, the latter an erratic one. Instead, South America is stereotyped as a quantity producer, better counted on for bulk than beauty.Now, however, South…

There are two distinct cultures in the world of colored stone retailing—the jewelry store and the rock shop. Rarely do they converge, although there have been crossovers from one to the other—usually from the rock shop to the jewelry store world and almost never the other way around.Each of these cultures has gems that are associated with it. Rock shops, with their large collector/hobbyist clienteles, are identified with gems traditionally labeled “ornamental” because they’re non-facetable, exotic-looking and inexpensive. A few of these so-called ornamental stones like malachite and rhodochrosite have earned small, mostly token niches in mainstream jewelry stores.But a…