Natural History Museum of L.A. Minblog: 02/22/13

Tucson part 1: Gem Shows

Yes it's that time year of again, the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, one of the most important events for the mineral world. Why is Tucson such a big deal? Well, there are several large mineral shows throughout the year (Denver, St Marie-aux-Mines, Munich) but Tucson is the largest. The Tucson visitor's Bureau estimates that 55,000 people will attend the 2013 show! Tucson started as a small mineral show in the 1950's and has grown into an enormous mineral-fossil-gem-meteorite extravaganza that lasts a month and takes over the Tucson Convention Center as well as hotels and parking lots throughout the city. Dealers from all over the world bring their stock and their recent discoveries to Tucson hoping to make a profit. If you can only go to one show, Tucson is it. Geologists and curators of museum collections also descend on the city hoping to find new specimens for both research and displays.

The finale event is the Tucson Gem and Mineral Society Show in the Tucson Convention Center. This is a large and well-organized show featuring both vendors and exhibits. Each year has a theme (this year was "Fluorite" next year is "Diamonds"), and museums and private collectors make displays of their best specimens to show off. While the best, most beautiful minerals in the world are rarely for sale at Tucson, they can sometimes be seen in the exhibit cases of the collectors!

Assoc. Curator Eloise Gaillou, work-study student Caroline Im and Collections manager Alyssa Morgan (3/4 of team L.A. County)

We left for Tucson on Feb 5th, this will put us in town for the second day of the big gem shows AGTA (American Gemological Trade Association) and GJX (Gem and Jewelry Exchange). These are trade shows and therefore closed to the general public.

To start off the week, Eloïse and Alyssa are joined by USC work-study student Caroline Im. Caroline has worked for us for 3.5 years sorting micromounts, it's about time she came to Tucson! Tony will join us next week after the gem shows are over.

We begin at AGTA. This is a relatively high-end show (at least for Tucson).

An overview of the AGTA show at the Convention Center

What's down there? Gems! More gems! Really nice jewelry!

The Spanish Inquisition Necklace

Collections Manager Russ Feather and volunteer Chris Webb

The Smithsonian always brings an incredible display to AGTA, this year they brought the Spanish Inquisition Necklace (no connection to the actual Inquisition) made from Colombian Emeralds and Indian diamonds. They also have a nice case of donated gems they received during the show!

Suite of fancy colored tanzanite. Courtesy Pala International.

We were very interested in acquiring a suite of fancy colored zoisites (a.k.a. tanzanites). These are rare colors from Arusha, and they are not heat-treated. We are still working on getting some of these, and will keep you posted.

Eloïse holding a wonderful Paraiba tourmaline from the Somewhere In The Rainbow collection.

Taking a quick break with Pierre Hardy and Stephanos Karampelas of the Gübelin Gem Lab in Switzerland. They spent part of a day patiently showing us cool stuff at the show and explaining some of the new treatments to dishonestly enhance the color of certain stones. That was very kind of them and we learned a lot!

We saw a lot of these faceted pearls, they are kind of interesting looking. Courtesy Edward Boehm.

Close up on some beautifully textured boulder opal from Australia.

These are very rare, in part because the region of Colombia where they outcrop is so dangerous, hardly anyone is willing to go there. Supposedly a dealer in Bogota trades food for rough sapphires to native people who live in the area. Courtesy Evan Caplan.

Equatorian Imports had impressive jewelry made of red beryl from Utah and sapphires from Montana. All-American.

He also had a wonderful single crystal of red beryl. Red is the rarest color of beryl, much more rare than green (emerald) and only found in the Wah Wah Mts of Utah.

Nice choice Caroline! Emeralds and sapphires.

We head across the parking lot to the GJX show, which is in a tent (but a very nice tent). GJX has a greater variety of gems and jewelry. More of a range from low end to very high end, but also fun oddball things like rare gems and geologically interesting stuff!

Luciana Barbosa had neat green Paraiba tourmalines with inclusions of copper metal. Later on, after mentioning this to a few Council Members, Mary & Bruce Stambaugh decided to buy this stone for us! Thanks a lot to the two of you! No picture with them unfortunately, we will have to rectify that.

So many gems to look at, so little time! It helped that we had made a list of stones to look for. Still it is very difficult to get through GJX without stopping at every booth. Even in comfortable shoes it is just painful.

One of our favorites, Coast to Coast Rare Gems. I need a faceted tugtupite from Greenland! That's cool!

Denis Gravier from Gravier & Gemmes is another dealer who has fun and interesting stones. These zoned diamonds were purchased by the Smithsonian for a collaborative research project with Eloïse.

Denis also had three tiny intriguing andradite garnets from San Benito County, California. We are new to CA and had not heard of such things so of course we called Tony. Tony had seen a few andradites from the New Idra Range (near the benitoite mines) but they were topazolites (yellow-brown andradite) and very expensive. Denis' garnets were demantoid (vivid green andradite) and cat's eyes due to asbestos inclusions. They were also very expensive but they are about to set us off on a crazy hunt we will explain in a later post.

Click below to read more about the show!

Tucson part 2: Hotel shows

Shows take place all over the city and a lot of time is needed to explore all them. In addition to the many mineral shows are fossil shows, shows with beads and cheap jewelry, shows with healing crystals, shows with meteorites and some with a little bit of all of that.

The first show we visit is called the Westward Look show (after the hotel it's held at). This is a show with expensive high-end mineral specimens. We rarely buy anything here but we do love to look.

We are joined this year by new Gem and Mineral Council Board member Joel Siegel. It's his first trip to Tucson, he wants to buy a dioptase and we decide to bring him here first just to mess with him.

Bill Larson has a pretty rhodocrosite to show off.

Many beautiful displays, these rooms are like small mineral museums but with better lighting. Courtesy Alain Martaud.

Crocoite. Courtesy Christophe Gobin.

Such nice specimens, so not going to happen (this year!). Courtesy: Kosner family.

We also saw these at AGTA, purple quahog pearls! I really liked them, maybe because I used to eat stuffed quahogs while living in Rhode Island. Courtesy: Cal Graeber.

This opal, on the other hand, is really not speaking to me!

Invariably we run into other museum folks. Nice to see you, Mike Rumsey (Senior Curator, Natural History Museum London) Jorgen Langhof (Curator, Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, Stockholm) and Alan Hart (Head of Earth Sciences Collections, Natural History Museum London).

In Christophe Gobin's room are some beautiful new pyrites on hematite from Elba, Italy.

We are thrilled to find out he is donating one to the museum! Merci beaucoup Christophe!

Dealer Alain Martaud also made a wonderful donation, a fluorite from Wise mine, New Hampshire, still on quartz matrix. We have an octahedron from the mine but the colorless overgrowth was removed, and this great piece is unmodified, we will add it to our display case at the main show!

Alain also had some fun stuff to show us, a plumbogummite (after baryte) from Badenweiller, Black Forest, Germany and a vivid blue fluorite from Puy Saint Gulmier, Puy de Dôme, France. We have no blue fluorite in the collection and would especially love that one if we find a donor!

Belgian geologist Valère Berlage had read Eloïse's blog post on new azurite and malachite deposits in Congo. He very kindly offered to donate a reference piece of the material!

He also "donated" some killer Belgian chocolates! Merci Valère!

A few other things we liked include this nice tantalite in Mineral Classic's room. I think the American Museum of Natural History may have bought this guy, so yay!

We want one of these French fluorites so badly, but who doesn't? Seeing P.O.R. (price on request) is never a good sign.

Time to get out of there. We are heading over to Marty Zinn's show at Hotel Tucson City Center. Still called the Inn Suites. This a great show with hundreds of dealers and a huge variety of mineral specimens, we always find specimens for the collection here and I'm sure we will find a dioptase for Joel that costs less than $100,000.

Tucson part 3: The Main Show

The Main Show is the main event! Exhibitors at this show receive a stipend to help cover travel expenses. Much appreciated. Our exhibit is also an important way for us to advertise our amazing collection and museum to the community of gem and mineral fans! So this year we chose our best fluorites, Eloïse and Tony came up with some great labels and called the exhibit "Fluorite Fun Facts".

Off we go, set-up begins the day before the show opens to the public. Looks like our case is along "museum row" We are in between National Museum of Scotland and Royal Ontario Museum. Time to carefully unpack all the minerals and find a nice way to arrange them in the case.

Done! Looks good. Wish we had a few more fluorites from localities like Russia, China and Europe. We have some big gaps in our collection. We do have some great fluorites from the Americas, including a local favorite, the Felix mine in Azusa, Los Angeles County.

Just a few cases down is Harvard Mineralogical Museum. Kevin Czaja, Raquel Alonso-Perez and Tracy Warmington.

Katherine Dunnell and Kim Tait from Royal Ontario Museum. Their minerals were trapped in US Customs! This is a lot more difficult for the people who come from outside the US. Those labels look fantastic, they can stand on their own!

We also contributed this specimen to the SMMP case (Society of Mineral Museum Professionals). This case was called "Odd and Unusual Fluorites". This weirdo was donated by Kay Robertson. Fluorite from Bavaria, Germany with a very strange crystal forms, tetrakishhexahedral crystals! Fluorite crystals are usually cubes or octahedrons. Thank you Kay and we're glad your odd fluorite got its moment in the spotlight!

Another big breakfast, we need the energy for another full day at the Convention Center.

Overview of the Main Show, this is the same space the AGTA show used the previous week. Déjà vu.

More fluorite exhibits:

From Rob Lavinsky's Chinese collection (4 pictures below).

Unbelievable association of fluorite, quartz and bournonite. Very jealous!

Fluorite on lollingite from Inner Mongolia, China. Love the penetration of lollingite in the pink fluorite.

From the Houston Area Mineral Society (4 pictures below).

Bill Severance had a great case, very fine fluorites (above and the 2 pictures below).

Harvard Museum (7 pictures below).

From the Spirifer collection, fluorite from Poland (2 pictures below).

That's very promising for our possible field trip to Poland!

From Alain Martaud's collection: French fluorite.

Just that many locations we don't have in our collection!

From Gail & Jim Spann's collection (3 display cases total). All from China! (2 pictures below).

Unfortunately, the picture doesn't show the fire this fluorite displays. It just jumps out when looking at the case!

Is this really fluorite? This mineral is a new find from Inner Mongolia. Dealer Rob Lavinsky had a few at the Westward Look but they were sold before we got to see them. This one was bought by Jim and Gail Spann and made it into their exhibit at the Main Show.

We also went to see a new exhibit at the Flandrau Science Center, University of Arizona, "Crystalline Treasures: The Mineral Heritage of China". This exhibit is curated by Rob Lavinsky.