2012.1 | 2011.3 | 2011.2 | 2011.1 | 2010.3 | 2010.2 | 2010.1 | 2009.3 | 2009.2 | 2009.1
2008.3 | 2008.2 | 2008.1 | 2007.3 | 2007.2 | 2007.1 | 2006.3 | 2006.2 | 2006.1
2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000
In this edition of our newsletter we mark the passing of George Bosshart, who loved the gem mines of Burma. We mark the passing in Burma of one era to the next.
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We’re looking forward to the world’s greatest gem and mineral show in February. One-stop general information about individual shows can be obtained from the Tucson EZ-Guide.
Pala International will be represented in Tucson as follows. We look forward to seeing our many friends there. Visit the Pala International Show Schedule for future events.
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The Westward Look Show this year begins with a bang—or, rather, the pop of a cork—as the wines of Coghlan Vineyard & Jewelers will be breathing in the showrooms of Pala International and Wayne A. Thompson Fine Minerals.
During the Denver show last fall, we had the pleasure of sampling the 2009 “Diopside” Pinot Noir, which impressed some judges at last year’s Pinot Noir Summit and Pinot Shootout.
Click the invitation at right for details.
For more on Coghlan, see our write-up from August 2011.
We just received word of an addition to the AGTA GemFair seminar lineup…
Andesine and Labradorite from Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Mexico & Oregon: A Panel Discussion
Moderator: Dana Schorr
Panelists: Richard Hughes, Ahmadjan Abduriyim, George Rossman & Adolf Peretti, with Shane McClure & John Emmett
The mining of natural red and green andesine in Tibet and near-colorless andesine in Inner Mongolia has been a subject of controversy. Large quantities of diffusion-treated andesine from Inner Mongolia entered the world markets without proper disclosure starting about 2000; however the idea that there might also be a source of natural red andesine in Tibet has been met with extreme skepticism from some quarters. This has not only polarized the gemological community, but has also created a lack of confidence in natural Oregon sunstone.
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| Andesine offered for sale at Hai Bou Zi village in Guyang County, Inner Mongolia on October 22, 2011. (Photo: Richard W. Hughes) |
This program will present the latest results from field visits to both Tibet and Inner Mongolia, along with advanced testing of stones from each of those deposits. Simple tests will be described to separate both Tibetan and Inner Mongolian andesines from Oregon sunstones. The purpose is to finally lay to rest the controversy surrounding these stones. Free samples will be handed out to all attendees.
When: February 1, 2012, 9:00–10:00 a.m.
Where: Tucson Convention Center
Room: Maricopa Room
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Pala joins nearly 100 exhibitors for this annual extravaganza.
Event: AGTA GemFair
When: January 31 – February 5, 2012
Where: Tucson Convention Center
Booth: 1016
The event website now features an interactive floorplan allowing you to see who is exhibiting by area of the convention center.
More than forty free seminars are offered by notables in the world of gemstones and pearls.
Pala International and two dozen other world-class mineral dealers shack up at a Sonoran Desert resort.
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Event: 11th Annual Westward Look Mineral Show
When: February 3–6, 2012
Where: Westward Look Resort
Suite: 224
See Pala International’s page on the Westward Look Show site.
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The symposium and guest speaker schedule is now available here.
TGMS is the largest gem and mineral show in the country. This year’s theme is “Minerals of Arizona.”
Event: 58th Annual Tucson Gem and Mineral Show
When: February 9–12, 2012
Where: Tucson Convention Center
Booth: Aisle 5 East
Many shows will offer their own shuttles. View your transit and parking options here. [back to top]
A planned 2014 move of Euro-Mineral & Euro-Gem from Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines to nearby Colmar will take place two years early due to a breakdown in negotiations, according to a statement by Michel Schwab, who has directed the show for thirty years. In 2010, two studies convinced Schwab and some other organizers that the move was needed; now it’s happening ahead of schedule.
Colmar is the capital of the Haut-Rhin department in which Sainte-Marie is situated, and the city lies on the eastern edge of the Parc naturel régional des Ballons des Vosges (named for the round, balloon-like mountains) that is home to Sainte-Marie. Colmar, with an urban-area population in 2008 of 126,000, is nearly 17 times larger than tiny Sainte-Marie. The show is taking advantage of the city’s Parc des Expositions de Colmar, with five halls totaling nearly 14,000 square meters (500,000 sq. ft.) of space.
On November 10, Sainte-Marie mayor Claude Abel and manager (and former Euro-Gem organizer) Raymonde Kistler announced that the town would host its own, competing event, which will take place the same days as the Colmar show, June 21–24, 2012. The “new” group, which stems from Sainte-Marie’s town council, goes by the name of Mineral & Gem à Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and has a new website. A letter of explanation to prospective exhibitors was issued December 1.
Fortunately the two venues are 35 km apart. Pala International plans to attend both next June.
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| Bon choix. Two emerald-cut fluorites from francophone countries. Left, a 14.22-carat, yellow fluorite from France, Inv. #13041. Right, a 5.3-carat reddish-orange fluorite from Switzerland, Inv. #14245. (Photos: Wimon Manorotkul, left, and Mia Dixon) |
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This month we feature a set of tourmalines from the original mining area in Brazil. The pegmatite that produced these copper-bearing beauties spans the states of Paraîba and Rio Grande do Norte. Distinguishing which side of the border an individual stone was mined from has been trying, even for the most highly equipped laboratories around the world.
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| Brazilian Paraiba. Blue green center oval, 2.8 carats, 9.22 x 7.8 x 5.57 mm, and the green teardrop pair, 2.51 carats, 7.5 x 6.3 x 4 mm. (Photo: Mia Dixon) |
Whichever state these paraibas were actually mined from seems irrelevant as you take in the light and color that is unlike any other gem on the planet. Dazzling neon hues of blue and green in a perfect medium tone, with saturation tilting the scales of what’s possible for a natural gemstone.
Throughout the year Pala is fortunate enough to have a handful of true Brazilian paraibas pass through our doors even though the mines have been exhausted for several years now. We also have a good supply of the now depleted Mozambique deposit. Contact us or check our inventory to see what’s available.
Interested? Call (phone numbers below) or email us to inquire. [back to top]
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We received word on Monday from Anne Bosshart that her husband George passed away last Saturday. “Over many years he was fighting cancer and lost in the end. Throughout all his days, his work kept him going and he loved to be with people, all the precious stones and their sources.” Our hearts go out to Anne, whose devoted care of George made it possible for him to remain out of hospital until just a few days before his death. It was such care that allowed George to prepare a study on color stability in spodumene, which he presented at last July’s International Gemmological Conference in Interlaken, Switzerland.
George Bosshart had been chief gemologist, Research and Development, at the Gübelin Gem Lab in Lucerne. He made many contributions to gemological science and literature. After his university education in Switzerland, he did some geological fieldwork in Canada. His career in gemology followed, and he became director of SSEF (Swiss Gemmological Institute) for many years, when the lab was located in Zurich. During this time he worked closely with Prof. H. A. Hänni.
George was a close friend of Dr. Karl Schmetzer for nearly forty years. “To his last days he was interested in gems and gemmology,” Dr. Schmetzer told us, “and continued his major research project about green diamonds and the origins of colour, working with his own collection and samples from museums.” He conducted irradiation experiments and compared spectroscopic properties of natural samples with irradiated stones.
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| Palling around. George Bosshart, right, with Edward Boehm, at the entrance to Ruby Land. (Photo: Dr. Eduard Gübelin and Edward Boehm) |
Richard W. Hughes shared with George “a love for travel to remote localities, particularly in Burma, and we often found ourselves exploring the same places, albeit at different times.” Anne Bosshart was George’s constant traveling companion, and they loved the jade mines of Upper Burma. “But it wasn't just the jade,” Hughes said. “I think, like myself, that was just a convenient excuse to travel, meet new people and explore new cultures. While certainly a Swiss at heart, he was simultaneously a citizen of the world.” George Bosshart contributed to “Burmese Jade: The Inscrutable Gem” by Hughes and others, archived on Palagems.com.
Pala’s Bill Larson recalled getting to know George personally on their first trip to Mogok, Burma, in 1993 with Dr. Eduard Gübelin. They rode together in the “pain-mobile,” named not after the famous mineralogist and gem dealer, but “so named because we all hit our heads on the metal roof (as we rode in the back of the four wheel drive vehicle—sans shock absorbers—the Burmese assigned us to) on every bump on the eight hour journey from Mandalay.” Out of all in that party, George got the worst gashes, but never complained even though they required medical attention. “He was just so excited to see the Valley of Rubies! He made the trip even more special; we all had the best time with him.”
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| Pain-mobile. Hold onto your hat, if you’re lucky enough to have one. Otherwise your pate will be at the mercy of jeep’s metal roof. (Photo: Dr. Eduard Gübelin and Edward Boehm) |
Friends and family will say goodbye on January 24 at 2:00 p.m. at the Protestant Church of Wädenswil. Consider donating to a charity in George Bosshart’s name: Schweizer Berghilfe (Swiss mountain assistance) or Schweizerischer Verein für das Blindenwesen (Swiss National Association of and for the Blind).
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| In situ. George Bosshart is in his element here, in Lin Yuang Chi Primary Sapphire Mine, Mogok, Burma. (Photo: Dr. Eduard Gübelin and Edward Boehm) |
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Emerald production in the Urals has been, er, rocky for some time. In 2000, what was described as Russia’s only emerald mine, in the Malyshevo area of Sverdlovsk Region, was slated to reopen after five years of closure due to financial challenges, according to Associated Press. An Irish-Russian joint venture, Zelen-Kamen, was to take over the mine from the Russian company Ural Emerald Mines, which operated it following the mine’s privatization in 1993. RusBusinessNews, in its historical overview of the mining, stated that Ural Emerald Mines never was able to actually sell the emeralds due to lack of a “special license.” This led to the company’s bankruptcy; Zelen-Kamen assumed the company’s debt in exchange for the mine development license.
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| Mineralogical Almanac issued this monograph in 2009 (Vol. 14, No. 2). |
As late as November 2007, however, the Russian daily Kommersant reported that Zelen-Kamen had been unable to begin production. Contrarily, Ronald Ringsrud, quoting dealer Warren Boyd in Ron’s Emeralds, A Passionate Guide, p. 292, mentions the mine’s “numerous contracts” for rough emerald and even alexandrite in 2006, but environmental regulations caused delays that suspended operations in 2007. In early 2008, the country’s Federal Natural Resources Usage Supervisory Service revoked the Zelen-Kamen’s license for the Malyshevo deposit. RusBusinessNews details subsequent developments through March 2011 when the Russian Federal Agency on Mineral Resources was to announce who would assume development of the deposit—either the Malyeshevo Mining Company or the Kaliningrad Amber Factory.
Prospects of the latter company’s success in obtaining the licence led RusBusinessNews to title its article, pessimistically, “Amber shadow on Ural emeralds,” since the company, according to experts, had “no money, no experience, no market prospects.” (Darkly, RusBusinessNews’s unnamed experts claimed that a turnover in ownership—without actual sales of stones—served the interests of what they inferred was a black market and that police believed that such emeralds, seized regularly during what it called 16 years of idleness, actually were coming from the mine.) Nevertheless, Kaliningrad Amber obtained the license and has resumed production, per the Sverdlovsk governor’s press office, as reported December 2 by RIA Novosti. Ringsrud, in his book, writes that Malyshevo, has the capacity to be one of the largest colored gemstone mining operations in the world.
The Malyshevo emerald deposit also was the primary source for industrial-use beryllium in the Soviet Union era. In November 2010, when prime minister Vladimir Putin ordered the license to be sold (it wasn’t sold until March 2011), the emerald deposit’s C1 (probable) reserves were pegged at 32.614 tons and C2 (inferred) reserves at 23.803 tons, according to Russia’s PRIME.
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The “Bahia” Emerald, which we’ve kept tabs on over the years, is now the subject of a National Geographic Explorer series segment. Here’s the description:
Some say it’s the largest emerald ever found, weighing in at 840 pounds and containing roughly 180,000 carats. Unearthed in Brazil in 2001, the Bahia emerald has an incredible history that fits its massive size: It spent months in a submerged bank vault in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and was even posted on eBay with a buy it now price of $75 million.
Emerald dealer and author Ron Ringsrud will be featured in the one-hour segment, as well as Anthony Thomas, who had claimed he had a sales receipt for the 840-pound specimen, only to have it burn in a 2006 fire. Check for the broadcast hour in your time zone on Sunday, January 29—when many of us will be in Tucson. The program is preceded by “Secret History of Diamonds.”
A reenactment of the emerald’s discovery in Brazil actually was done in Colombia, when the National Geographic crew was filming Ringsrud. See this four-minute National Geographic Channel streaming video, “Emerald Fever,” in which Ringsrud takes you through some of the bargaining and buying in the Plaza Central of Muzo, Colombia.
Two other litigants in the emerald case, Jerry J. Ferrara and Kit Morrison, feature the National Geographic logo on their website, perhaps in anticipation of their own roles in the Explorer segment. The website (as of August 8, 2011) touts a forthcoming book, Shades of Green: The Bahia Emerald Story, written by the pair, in which a sensational story is made even more gawdy by the appearance of Bernard Madoff, who was to have involved the emerald in a $197 million banking transaction, according to the website’s history page.
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| Oiled, but never irradiated. This bright green Colombian emerald has a weight of just under two carats. Inv. #15527. (Photo: Mia Dixon) |
American Gemological Laboratories (AGL) rang in the new year with a press release regarding the identification of Colombian emeralds that have had irradiation treatment. AGL had heard from wholesalers that such treatment improved the color of some Colombian emeralds. AGL president Christopher P. Smith noted that this method had been shown to modify the color of natural and synthetic emeralds nearly twenty years ago.
On his own website, Ronald Ringsrud writes that in 1985 he sent some emeralds for gamma ray treatment. The results were underwhelming: “they looked like dull peridots!” With the recent news, Ringsrud contacted gemologist Rodrigo Giraldo of the CDTEC Emerald Laboratory in Bogotá, who said irradiation could result in a “greyish brown undertone.” You’ll want to use the link above to see what several prominent gemologists had to say about this development.
A 57,500-carat emerald, billed as the world’s largest faceted emerald, heads to auction on January 28 in Kelowna, British Columbia. According to the Calgary Sun, the 11-kg stone was in town on Monday for an appraisal at $1.15 million by Calgary’s Premier Gems after being flowin in from—we’re not making this up—Brazil, according to Premier’s blog. The emerald’s owner, Calgary’s Regan Reaney, told the Sun that the stone was mined in Brazil and sent to India for cutting before being delivered to Canada. The stone will be displayed by Western Star Auctions in Kelowna until the sale.
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Last month we pointed to a December 8 Bain & Company report that projected a doubling of demand for diamonds by 2020, with price hikes in the offing due to international demand. (Note that a mine in China’s Liaoning province was announced on January 13, having been discovered in 2010, with a projected 30-year lifespan and output of one million carats.)
This month we look at a CBS report from Minneapolis featuring local dealer John Sorich, who in thirty years of business could not believe the 2011 market. The latest price increases are among the most significant that he’s ever seen. And, just as Bain predicted that the higher-end stones would be affected the most, Sorich already is seeing that trend, offering the example of a 3.5-carat ring that would have cost $16K last year, but now will cost $3K more, “thanks to that emerging international market.” In the face of higher prices, the report offers a “hot new trend” for engagement rings: surround a colored stone with several smaller diamonds.
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| A more modest proposal. As the CBS report suggested, a center stone surrounded by smaller diamonds can engage the emotions and the eye. Above, a demantoid garnet stands in for a 1-carat colorless diamond, ringed by 0.9 ctw of baguette diamonds. Below, a 5.51-carat tourmaline flanked by 0.60 ctw of round diamonds—large yet affordable. Click images for details. (Rings: The Collector Fine Jewelry; Photos: Wimon Manorotkul) |
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In what one analysis termed a move for leverage in Zimbabwean politics, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control added two of the country’s diamond mining companies to a sanctions list on December 9. The companies are Marange Resources Ltd. and Mbada Diamonds Ltd. This flies in the face of the decision in November by the Kimberley process to allow exports from these two mines. The parent company, Zimbabwe Mining Development Corp., already was on the blacklist. Thus a Stratfor analysis, December 15, opined that the U.S. move probably had less to do with alleged human rights violations in the Marenge region and more to do with exerting influence in the possible presidential appointment of current defense minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, whom the U.S. opposes. On Monday, Zimbabwe’s finance minister, Tendai Biti, challenged the sanctions.
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Well, the annual “mid-year” gems emporium, which historically has taken place in October, was held in 2011 even later than 2010’s November sale. This year’s even had been announced by Mizzima News as having been cancelled. The most recent sale began December 24, ending January 3, 2012, according to The Myanmar Times (MT). The total earned was €700 million, or $903 million. The sale featured almost 12,000 jade lots (8300 sold), 230 gem lots (39 sold) and 270 pearl lots (212 sold). The top lot sold for about $9.3 million, and 55 jade lots sold for more than €1 million each. Chinese dealers picked up the most expensive lots.
The MT story claimed a December 2010 sale brought in $2.9 billion, but that appears to have been confused with the March 2011 sale, which garnered $2.8 billion. The November 2010 mid-year emporium brought in $1.44 billion, according to our statistics. (See also this story, below, on that sale.) Non-paying bidders previously had caused problems, so deposits on all bids were required at this latest emporium, which appear to have slowed sales. The New Light of Myanmar stated that the next annual emporium would be held “soon.”
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| General Saw Mutu Sai Pho, commander-in-chief of Karen National Union, signs the cease-fire in Hpa-an, January 12. (Photo: Kaung Htet) |
Even as encouraging political developments continue in Burma, reports from the Kachin jade region indicate a status quo of conflict. The Irrawaddy reported a week ago that fear of new fighting between Burma troops and the Kachin Independence Army caused refugees to flee the Hpakant jade area, just days before Burma signed a groundbreaking cease-fire with rebels in another ethnic region—Karen. The Karen conflict—like other such conflicts—involves ethnic autonomy and predates Burma’s independence from Britain. Burma had signed agreements with all other major ethnic groups, and so the signing of a Karen cease-fire, as noted by Reuters last Thursday, was seen as a possible “small step” towards the end of twenty years of sanctions against Burma.
Small step or big step, a day later the U.S. restored full diplomatic relations with Burma, after the government freed more than six hundred political prisoners, one of the largest in Asia’s history, according to an unnamed senior state department official.
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| Root beer and olives. From our Old Stock… New Pix section: Above, a 2.8-carat root beer-colored, emerald-cut spinel from Burma, Inv. #19017. Below, a hefty 26.54 carats of olive green enstatite, Inv. #17734. (Photos: Mia Dixon) |
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Rob Bates, senior editor of JCK Magazine, wasted little time in examining the issue of U.S. gemstone sanctions against Burma, yesterday. Bates wrote that Jewelers Vigilance Committee president/CEO Ceclia Gardner stated that lawmakers are looking at the lifting of sanctions even if no legislation is in the works. And Jewelers of America supported the ban, but CEO Matt Runci, who retires from JA at the end of 2012, said the group looks forward to easing the ban. JCK pointed to Australia already moving in that direction. ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), at the request of Burma’s foreign minister, says it agrees with a call for the lifting of economic sanctions. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), ASEAN took the same stance a year ago. (Burma declined to chair ASEAN, in rotating fashion, five years ago due to international pressure.) Yesterday, the Philippines called for sanctions to end, as reported by Associated Press. Even U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had a photo op with President Thein Sein yesterday, calling him a “genuine reformer,” holding out the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions in April after elections in Burma.
Just a few days ago, when outlining this edition of our newsletter, we had planned to lead with news of British foreign secretary William Hague’s offer to lift sanctions in return for further “bold steps” by Burma. Sound promising? Not to The Myanmar Times, which called this ploy by Hague “moving the goalposts” and inventing “new rules of the game.” MT actually claimed that the need for such a shift is because “the changes that have occurred owe little or nothing to Western pressures, but are essentially home-grown.” Oh, and: “To acknowledge this too openly could lead to a loss of face.”
In some encouraging news, The Irrawaddy today reported on peace talks in China between Kachin rebels and the Burma government, which has ordered the country’s troops to hold its fire, according to AFP. Jade roads that had been closed due to security concerns have been reopened, as reported by Kachin News Group. [back to top]
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With Pala Presents, we offer selections from the library of Pala International’s Bill Larson, who will share with us some of the wealth of information in the realm of gems and gemology.
Earlier this year we treated readers to Martin Ehrmann’s unpublished (and unfinished) manuscript, Ruby Mines of Mogok. We followed up with his 1957 Gems & Gemology article, Gem Mining in Burma, which contains substantial overlap. This month we offer Part Two of another 1957 three-part article with material that will be somewhat familiar to readers of the other pieces. We offer it, however, so that people interested in the subject will have multiple resources as well as mid-century images of the mines, methods, miners and dealers of Mogok and elsewhere.
In Part Two of Burma, The Mineral Utopia, Ehrmann looks at some of the gemstones (and other minerals) apart from ruby, sapphire and spinel, for which Burma is less recognized. He credits Arthur C. D. Pain for bringing some of these to the fore. Pain lived in Mogok, and Ehrmann rattles off a list of a dozen different stones from the area, including a then-unnamed mineral that surely was the rare borate mineral that now bears Pain’s name. Ehrmann then rounds out this installment with a history of mining in Burma, including jadeite.
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| Painite, such as this .46-carat baguette, was once considered the rarest gemstone in the world. Inv. #13016. (Photo: Wimon Manorotkul) |
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This article, from Lotus, the inflight magazine of Air Bagan, looks at Burma’s jade, gem and pearl emporium from the point of view of a novice. Emily Jane Chang, who grew up in Hong Kong, was no stranger to Burma, having visited there years before. But it wasn’t until November 2010 that she was introduced to the “mid-year” emporium by an old high school friend who had attended these sales since they began in 1964. The November 2010 sale—the first to be held in the country’s political capital of Naypyidaw—nearly tripled the proceeds over the March 2010 sale. And it brought in ten times the 2009 mid-year total.
Read the article here. [back to top]
— End January Newsletter • Published 1/18/12 —
2012.1 | 2011.3 | 2011.2 | 2011.1 | 2010.3 | 2010.2 | 2010.1 | 2009.3 | 2009.2 | 2009.1
2008.3 | 2008.2 | 2008.1 | 2007.3 | 2007.2 | 2007.1 | 2006.3 | 2006.2 | 2006.1
2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000
Note: Palagems.com selects much of its material in the interest of fostering a stimulating discourse on the topics of gems, gemology, and the gemstone industry. Therefore the opinions expressed here are not necessarily those held by the proprietors of Palagems.com. We welcome your feedback.
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