AGTA GTC's Laboratory Update for October 6, 2006
In this message…
- Under the Same Moon: Hunting the Mother Lode Abroad
- New Yorker Magazine: The Path of Stones – The Gem Rush in Madagascar
- Upcoming Lectures
Under the Same Moon: Hunting the Mother Lode Abroad
Seek knowledge, even unto China.
Islamic maxim
Read the headlines. Boo! International travel is undertaken only by the clinically insane or those with years of Special Ops experience under their bandoliers. Turn on the tube. Boo! The newspapers are correct – planet earth is one giant pool of war, disease and pestilence. If the pox or pollution don't gettcha, al Qaeda is close behind. As Lou Reed sang: "You've got a black .38 and a gravity knife. You still have to ride the train."
Lou was singing about the New York subways. Having braved those dangerous tunnels, we feel qualified to discuss what some might regard as a similar peril: foreign travel.
In our business, travel is not just recommended, but should be de rigueur. Fact is that those pretty little things worn in Carmel and Cannes are imports from the furthest reaches of the globe. But because of the perceived dangers, some in our business are content to sit back and let others bring it on home. This is a pity, for they are missing out on one of the most rewarding aspects of our business, that of visits to foreign gem-producing localities.
Getting to the mines is sometimes arduous, as this photo taken on the road below Tajikistan's Kuh-i-Lal spinel mines shows. But the rewards of such travel cannot be overstated. Photo © Richard W. Hughes. |
Of course, the road to the mines does not always lead to lands of milk and honey. During this past summer in Tajikistan, RH watched as one travel companion retched out the window of his vehicle (giardia?); days earlier another had passed out on the floor of a yurt (malaria?), while a third had rushed into the Murghab governor's mansion with a panic-stricken grimace that suggested breakfast was near detonation (liquid bomb?). Similarly, JK will never forget that evening in Thailand when, as he merrily chowed down on seafood near Chanthaburi, a dozen of his fellow diners were carted away in ambulances. Foreign travel to distant places can have its downside. Despite the old saw, getting there is not always half the fun.
To the source
Believe not what you hear, but only what you see, and of this, just half.
Ancient maxim
Considering the above tales of woe, why would any jeweler with an IQ above single digits even think about venturing to such places?
We can offer a few reasons.
First, precious stones are found across the globe. Thus, every trip abroad is a potential tax write-off, if handled properly.
But there is more. This summer, we were able to undertake a detailed study of emerald and alexandrite from Russia's Malysheva mine, including an on-site visit by RH. Upon his return, RH was visiting a dealer when a large "Russian" emerald was slid across the table. Because of his recent experiences, a quick look with the microscope was all that was needed to confirm the origin as Malysheva.
Gorgeous gems from the Russian motherland A selection of fine alexandrite and emerald rough from the famous Malysheva deposit outside Yekaterinburg, Russia. Photo © Wimon Manorotkul/Pala International; specimens courtesy of Tsar Emerald Corp. |
How many jewelers realize that, while Sri Lanka does produce quantities of light blue sapphire, Serendib also produces rich blue stones that can stand with the finest from Burma or Kashmir? How many also understand that, in addition to the deep blues, Burma's Mogok Stone Tract also yields stones of both pale blue and yellow? Only jewelers that have personally visited a mine can fully understand the range of materials it produces. There is no substitute for direct experience.
Picture this: As you offer a fine colored gemstone to your client, you pull out a photo album showing you at the very place where such gems are mined. Even better, you may want to permanently display a photo or two of you at the source. This creates an aura of expertise that clearly sets you apart from your competitors.
Richard Hughes descending into a gem pit in Madagascar. An album of photos such as this can help jewelers close sales because of the aura of expertise they establish. Photo: Vincent Pardieu. |
For What It's Worth
Why is gold worth some twenty bucks an ounce? A thousand men, say, go searchin' for gold. After six months, one of them's lucky…. His find represents not only his own labor, but that of 999 others, to boot. That's 6000 months, 500 years, scramblin' over a mountain, goin' hungry and thirsty. An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the findin' and the gettin' of it.
Walter Houston, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948
But pox on the tax write-offs and photo ops; there are bigger reasons to visit the source. Imagine sitting for hours in the sweltering Brazilian bush watching two miners muscle spade after spade of earth out of an ever-deeper hole. Getting up to leave, you take stock of the day's finds – one colorless topaz and a fractured aquamarine.
Or take a family of miners near Ilakaka, Madagascar. When their production from the past two days' work is displayed, the tiny pile of stones does not fill even half a palm – of a child. At a nearby mechanized mine, despite machinery and a crew of a dozen, cleaning out the jig yields just a few dozen sapphires, none of which will cut a stone above two carats.
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Handful of gem rough near Ilakaka, Madagascar. A family worked several days
for these meager finds, illustrating just how rare fine gems are. Photo © Richard
W. Hughes.These are events we have personally witnessed, humbling experiences that drive home the true rarity of fine colored stones (not to mention the difficulty often encountered in bringing them to market). When you have seen this with your own eyes, you can explain the cost of your gems with both honesty and authority.
Got milk? A Tajik girl offers fermented milk to weary travelers in the remote Badakhshan region of Tajikistan. Photo © Richard W. Hughes. |
Bringin' It On Home
Now let us clue you in on a secret. The most important reason to visit far-flung locales has absolutely nothing to do with stones. Watch the world via the evening news and you're bound to come away with a negative impression. Everyday kindness rarely makes the cut. And yet it exists across the globe. We have experienced it wherever our feet have led us.
Witness the photograph at right. As RH was traveling through Badakhshan last July, his party paused on the roadside to rest. A Tajik girl soon appeared, armed with a bottle of fresh fermented milk. Approaching the vehicle, she smiled shyly, extended it to us and then walked away. Could this be a plot? The Afghan border was less than a mile away. Throwing caution to the wind, we drank the milk, and survived.
Some days later, just after descending from a tough climb to the Kuh-i-Lal spinel mines, two Wakhi girls skipped down the trail carrying an urn. Stopping, they opened it and offered us generous helping of their fresh goat cheese. In one of the poorest regions of the world, they were not after money, but simply happy to share what they had with visitors from abroad. When was the last time we treated foreigners with similar grace and decency?
Hate and war become more difficult when a land and a people are more than abstractions, more than just electrons on a screen. By personally visiting other lands, we learn to better appreciate the values that tie us together.
Moonwalk
All who walk this earth are born under the same moon. Our shared humanity is far greater than differences in language, culture or religion. This lesson is the true mother lode of foreign travel, more precious than any stone we might unearth. Grasp this simple concept and, wherever you touch down, it will always be a land of milk and honey.
And what of those dangerous New York subways? They are also under the same moon. When Manhattan's tunnels were excavated in the 19th Century, gem garnets were found.
So fear not. Go forth and explore this magical planet. Seek knowledge, even unto Manhattan!
. . . . .
Note: This article appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of the American Gem Society's Spectra magazine, as part of the AGTA GTC's regular "Elemental" column.
New
Yorker article
on sapphires –
The
Path of Stones: The Gem Rush in Madagascar by Burkhard Bilger
It is not often that the mainstream press covers the colored stone business, which is why we were delighted to see Burkhard Bilger's "The Path of Stones: The Gem Rush in Madagascar" appear in the October 2nd, 2006 issue of The New Yorker magazine. Bilger's article profiles AGTA member Tom Cushman, who has been involved in Madagascar's gemstone business for many years. The New Yorker's press release summarizes the article:
Burkhard Bilger writes about the gem industry in Madagascar, which has some of the richest, and least exploited, gem deposits on earth ("The Path of Stones," p. 66). Tom Cushman, an American who realized the potential of Madagascar's gem industry before the sapphire and ruby rushes there in the late nineties, and who has worked at nearly every level of the trade, tells Bilger, "Practically the whole island is gemmiferous. If you fall out of an airplane, land on the ground, and start digging, you're going to find something." Of Madagascar's precious stones, Bilger writes, "There were rubies as red as those in Sri Lanka, garnets as green as those in Kenya's Tsavo National Park, and some stones, like flaming-pink pezzottaite, that could be found almost nowhere else." What makes Madagascar so attractive to people like Cushman is that its gem supply is both easily accessible and virtually untapped. Bilger writes that a stone's price depends on many qualities, most notably its beauty, rarity, and durability, but also its clarity, its color, its brittleness, the number of jewels that can be cut from it, and, more recently, the way it will respond to special refining procedures.
Cushman, who arrived in Madagascar in 1991, tells Bilger that he relished the country's "Wild West" atmosphere. He says, "It's great. There's murder, claim-jumping, sex, violence, scandal, corruption." Of the danger, Cushman adds, "In four days, I watched three rookies get robbed of between thirty and fifty thousand dollars each. Just pop, pop, pop. You could hear gunfire every night." For most miners, Bilger writes, the rewards were worth the risk. "Digging for sapphires was three to five times as profitable as farming, and the money worked its way through the community." For a country stricken by poverty, mining provided significant opportunities for the Malagasy. Bilger writes, "Much of the land was publicly owned and the sapphires lay close to the surface, available to anyone who filed a claim." Though Cushman didn't have the greatest luck when it came to mining, others struck large deposits. "All told," Bilger writes, "about half a million Malagasy made some income off mining."
At the same time, he adds, "No one was better at mining the miners than the foreign dealers. Cushman paid about thirty dollars a carat for large, good-quality rough in Ilakaka, then cut and sold it for three or four times that price in Asia or the United States." Though his profit far exceeded that of most Malagasy workers (in a good year, he might make a hundred thousand dollars), Cushman tells Bilger that he has no patience with those who called his work exploitation: "You come down to Madagascar and live the way I live, take the risks that I take, take the s*&t I take, and tell me it ain't fair." He does, however, concede that the Malagasy will have a difficult time digging themselves out of poverty if the current structure of the industry stays the same. Bilger writes, "To build a true gem industry, they had to learn to cut, treat, and sell stones directly to wholesalers." Cushman himself is in many ways spearheading the country's effort to educate its native population: in 2002, backed by the country's first truly elected democratic government in thirty years, he was hired to help open a gemology school.
Left to right: Vincent Pardieu and Dana Schorr talk turkey with Tom Cushman at his Institute of Gemology of Madagascar (IGM) in October 2005. Photo © Richard W. Hughes. |
Upcoming Lectures
Toronto, Canada, October 28, 2006
The AGTA GTC's Richard Hughes will be delivering the keynote address at the Canadian Gemmological Association's 2006 Conference and Graduation.
- From Madagascar to Malysheva:
In Search of the Precious Stone
28 October, 2006
Toronto, Canada
Bangkok, Thailand, December 6 –9, 2006
The AGTA GTC's Lore Kiefert and Richard Hughes will present lectures at the 1st GIT International Gem & Jewelry Conference.
- Demantoid Garnet from Iran
By Dr. Lore Kiefert - Coated Topaz
By Dr. Lore Kiefert - Gem Hunting in Central Asia: Russian Emerald, Tajik Ruby &
Spinel
By Richard W. Hughes, with Vincent Pardieu
