Information on top and semi precious gemstones

Topaz is an aluminum silicate containing about 20% water and fluorine and comes in several colors. Yellow quartz is sold today under the name of topaz and it is one of the most popular colors, although there are others which are greenish and of reddish tint.. Golden Topaz from Brazil is a golden brown to pink color.

The main topaz suppliers are Brazil, Germany and Russia. Japan also produces topaz. Topaz is harder than Rock crystal and is known for its huge crystals - a colorless one from Brazil was found weighing as much as 600 pounds, well formed and clear throughout. The largest known topaz was cut in 1977 and weighed 21,327 carats. Another is known at 36,853 carats. Found in Australia topaz is usually light yellow, green and blue also. Hardness 8 and Orthorhombic crystals brilliant and beautiful stone found in quartz rose rocks. Associated with tin ores . Tinted by heating. Sky blue topaz found in the Scottish Highlands, Brazil and Siberia.

Semi precious Turquoise Vase

- Turquoise is composed of aluminum copper sulphate hydrated phosphate of aluminum and copper) and is only medium hard. Egyptians are the first people known to mine it in Sinai over 6000 years ago.

The finest is said to be found in Naishapur,  Iran, where it has been mined for about 3000 years Turquoise is found also in Sinar, Turkestan and Tibet. The colors range from pale blue to deep green/blue. Water content affects the color of the stone. It responds to human touch and warmth and in the  Middle East is used as a reflector

Beautiful Turquoise Bracelet

The whole specimen stands 4.8 cm high. Leonard also had several specimens from the Zomba-Malosa Complex, Chilwa Alkaline Province, Malawi (see the article in the January-February issue). The best known mineral from this locality is aegerine, which Leonard had in crystals up to 16 cm long, plus several zircon crystals, sometimes attached to the aegerines.

Pakistan continues to produce interesting new minerals, or just better ones than from other localities. Dudley Blauwet of Mountain Minerals International keeps on top of these things. He had some rather nice zircon from Buibin, near Astar, Waziret district, Northern Areas. They are clean, reddish brown dipyramids in what appeared to be a very impure marble, in crystals up to 1.5 cm. Some of these have been available recently, but as loose crystals with no matrix.

Dassu, Baltistan, Northern Areas was represented by stellerite in white hemispheres to 2.5 cm in diameter. Most are loose groups, some with minor muscovite matrix. They are not as lustrous as the stellerites from Jalgaon, India, but quite interesting considering the pegmatite origin. Dudley also had some of the steilerites from Jalgaon, which have a beautiful luster and translucency, some with chalcedony and gyrolite on gray-blue drusy quartz.

A fairly new dealer in the business is DeTrin-Rising Sun (145-62 7th Ave., Whitestone, NY 11357) who specializes in the minerals of Russia and its former republics. I think that some of us are reaching a degree of saturation with minerals from those areas, because there has been so much available recently. Unfortunately, much of the material available these days is mediocre and/or damaged. Not so with the material of DeTrin, the owner of which seem to have a great eye for the best quality material. Most of their stock was the typical suite from Dalnegorsk, but of very fine quality. I look forward to what this dealer will bring forth in the future. Jeffrey B. Fast (19 Oak Knoll Rd., E. Hampton, CT 06424) made available a fine selection of the new material from the Becker quarry, West Willington, Connecticut. The suite includes pale smoky, tessin-habit quartz to 7 cm long, pocket almandine crystals to 2.5 cm and white magnesite rhombs to 1 cm with minor drusy pyrite. One of the minerals I wanted to see was not in the room--

Semi precious smoky Quartz and Sterling Silver Pendant, photo by crystalmoon1

the terminated pocket kyanite. Some other local mineral material was being handled by Lawrence D. Venezia (115 Coleridge St., E. Boston, MA 02128). Rare, but not particularly attractive, were masses of orange donpeacorite from Balmat, New York. From Pearl Lake, Lisbon, New Hampshire, Larry had some very clean almandine and staurolite in schist. The staurolites are up to 5 cm in length and many have small garnets sprinkled on them.

Topaz-Mineral Exploration's specialty (1605 Hillcrest, Grand Haven, MI 49417) is the minerals of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Tom Bee, the owner, besides having an eye-opening display of minerals from that area, had many for sale. He had one of the finest assemblages of well-crystallized copper that I have seen in a while, plus fine calcite with copper inclusions, half-breeds, datolite and epidote on calcite. Many of these specimens have come out of old collections. There was a buying frenzy in his room; I almost had to fight someone to photograph a piece before it was bought. Luckily the fellow and I are still friends. That fellow is Gary Richards, Keeper of the Earth (2511 N. Mason, Appleton, WI 54914). Gary is a very experienced dealer who spent a number of years helping Lance Hampel. On his own now, Gary is doing a fine job and also has a special fondness for minerals of the U.P. (Upper Peninsula), as they call it in those parts. Gary had recently bought an old collection that was heavy in pegmatite minerals, especially tourmaline and beryl. Localities included some of the common and expected--Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, California, Brazil--plus some that are not so common. These included Rabenstein, Bavaria; Namibia; Adun Chulon and Mursinka (both in Russia) and the old Gillette quarry, Haddam Neck, Connecticut. I was pleased to relieve Gary of the beryl from that last locality as well as the one from Mursinka.

Hans van Binsbergen of Classic Minerals (P.O. Box 1391, Exton, PA 19341) had been holding on to a batch of very high quality Lynch Station, Virginia turquoise that had been collected about five years ago. He offered for sale eight flats of bright blue, microcrystalline druses on quartz.

The new red grossular seen at the Tucson Show was well represented in the room of Beau Gordon (Jendon Minerals, P.O. Box 6214, Rome, GA 30162). They are from Sierra de La Cruz, Coahuila, Mexico and ranged from thumbnail to small cabinet size, all on matrix. Beau also had a nice selection of crudely crystallized gold from Mt. Kare, Papua, New Guinea. Most are slightly waterworn, small nuggets

The Gems of Afghanistan; Fluorescence

Although early Arabs indicate Sri Lanka as the main corundum, ruby, source, the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan is frequently mentioned for its red spinel, garnet and lapis lazuli. References to Badakhshan appear in the writings of al-Muqaddasi (10th century), al-Biruni, Teifaschi and other chroniclers. One such chronicler was an encyclopedic named, coincidentally, Yaqut (corundum!). Shihab al-Din Abu Abdallah Yaqut Ibn Abd Allah Yaqut al-Hamawi al-Rumi (1179-1229) was most famous for his geographical encyclopedia. This magnum opus alphabetically lists cities and towns in the then-known world, defining location, commercial products, resources, weather conditions and so forth.(2) It is hundreds of pages long. Badakhshan is one of many places cited for gem deposits. Here Yaqut notes that the mountains of Badakhshan are renown for lapis lazuli and balkhash,  though he adds that the latter tends to be of low quality. He goes on to say that Badakhshan produces a curious stone that

St. John's, a famous but now largely exhausted source for peridot, not emerald (Wilson, 197.

Elsewhere in his ten-page section on emerald, al-Biruni limits sources to "Egypt, the oases, Mount Muqattam and the Land of the Bujja." Mount Muqattam refers to a range of hills east of Cairo, and Bujja was the name of a tribe residing to the south. Al-Biruni goes on to list emerald mine locations cited by earlier writers. In a probable reference to the so-called Cleopatra's Mines of Sikkit and Zubara, he quotes one author as saying:

Verily, the emerald source is in Upper Egypt, along the southern Nile, in an open plain that is cut off from civilization. No other mine on earth is known to have emerald. Still later, al-Biruni cites a chronicler to the effect that "Emerald is borne by water and mixed with sand. It is extracted from wells, along with the sand." Finally, he relates a mining technique recorded by the Razi Brothers, who say that emerald bearing matrix is daubed with oil, making the emerald easier to spot.

Possibly the most interesting part of al-Biruni's section on emerald is the reference to mines at the oases and Mount Muqattam. Which oases is he speaking of? And were the Muqattam hills an actual source for emerald, assuming he is not confusing emerald (zummurud) with some other green stone? Was Muqattam a source for emerald in times of yore? The prospect is fascinating, as historians generally regard the area of Sikkit and Zubara as the only two sources in Egypt that yielded this material (see, for example, Bauer, 1970; Bancroft, 1984; Sinkankas, 1981. The Muqattam hills are hundreds of miles to the north, in Lower Egypt!(3) Besides sources and mining tips, al-Biruni discusses the color-grading of emeralds, imitations encountered in the marketplace, and prices. The pricing information is on a table which relates value, in silver dirhams, to carat weight. For example, a 9-carat emerald is listed at 8,000 dirhams.

Gemstones history is not ended yet and there is more to come, read more.