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Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, Gemstone Mining

What jewels will King Charles III use in his coronation? – by Kenichi Serino (PBS News Hour – May 5, 2023)

https://www.pbs.org/

The world will be watching as King Charles III formally ascends the British throne in a coronation ceremony Saturday, just as his own mother, Elizabeth II, did 70 years ago. From monarch to monarch now passes the crown – actually, a few of them.

The jewels that adorn that regalia, including some of the largest diamonds in the world, are seen as some of Britain’s greatest treasures and help lend powerful symbolism to this ancient ritual. But their histories tell a more complicated story – some steeped in the legacy of colonialism.

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55.22-carat ruby heads to auction with US$30-million estimate (Jewellery Business – April 12, 2023)

https://www.jewellerybusiness.com/

A record-breaking pigeon-red ruby is paced to fetch a pretty penny when it goes under the hammer at Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels this June.

Dubbed “Estrela de Fura” (“Star of Fura” in Portuguese), the 55.22-carat cushion-cut gem is the largest ruby ever brought to auction. The stone, which was cut from a 101-carat rough recovered in Mozambique by Toronto-based mining group, Fura Gems, carries a pre-show estimate of $40.4 million (US$30 million).

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Inside the emerald mines that make Colombia a global giant of the green gem – by John Otis (NPR.org – March 11, 2023)

https://www.npr.org/

MUZO, Colombia — Although he has helped transform Colombia’s emerald industry, long a source of violence and environmental damage, former U.S. diplomat Charles Burgess admits that he got into the business on a whim.

“I don’t have a mining background,” he told NPR during a recent tour of the mine he runs near the town of Muzo deep in the Andes Mountains. “I never in my wildest imagination thought I’d be working in any sort of business like this. But it’s been fascinating.” Burgess, 67, is president of the Muzo Companies Colombia that mine and export 85% of Colombia’s emeralds, helping to make the country the world’s largest producer of high-quality emeralds.

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Shining a light on the world of coloured gems: Michael Valitutti reflects on the state of the jewellery industry – by Carolyn Gruske (CIM Magazine – October 25, 2022)

https://magazine.cim.org/en/

Although Michael Valitutti is a graduate gemologist working at Nathan Hennick & Co. Ltd., that title fails to describe exactly how involved he is with every step of the jewellery business. From visiting mines, to buying parcels of exotic gems at trade shows, to developing new processes to manipulate gemstones and metal, to selling finished pieces on a company website (GemsEnVogue.com) and on television shopping channels around the world, he takes a hands-on approach to the jewellery business.

CIM Magazine dropped by his office in Toronto to talk about the jewellery industry, the effects of COVID-19 on gemstone mining and the curious shopping habits of millennial Australians.

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Cracking open Greenland’s booming ruby mine – by Julien Bouissou (Le Monde – August 3, 2022)

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/

Located near the Arctic Circle, the Aappaluttoq deposit reflects a growing industry. For the Norwegian family business LNS, which operates the site, the financial challenge is far from being conquered.

In Air Greenland’s small twin-propeller plane, which had just hopped across the icy airport runway of Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, the 20 or so passengers could finally catch their breath. In the icy month of February, where temperatures could drop to -25°C, it was difficult to see where the runway began and where the frozen waters of the Davis Strait ended.

“If he had landed one meter too soon, we would have all ended up like ice cubes in the sea,” a passenger said casually, before zipping up his coat, putting on his hat and getting off the plane.

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The pick of Ontario. A story of amethyst and adventure – by Bill Steer (Sudbury.com – June 22, 2022)

https://www.sudbury.com/

This week, Back Roads Bill stops at an amethyst mine on the way to the most westerly point in Ontario

It’s road trip time, again, and this time we are headed west, not to the oil patch, but to stand on the most western, surveyed boundary of Ontario. The outcome of this trip and the subsequent story remains to be told.

Along the way will gather more day trip information from provincial parks and nearby communities for another travelogue. On the way, though, there will be a stop for a cool souvenir from a Northwestern Ontario back roads repeated destination. So many times a story was warranted but this is the time one was written.

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The Peculiar Charm of Coober Pedy, Australia’s Opal Capital – by Brett Leigh Dicks (New York Times – March 14, 2022)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Scattered around town are do-it-yourself mining operations, abandoned film props and a cafe that serves both waffles and opals.

It could have been a Saturday night in any Australian town. Against the backdrop of a fiery sunset, a line of vehicles snaked its way into the local drive-in.

At this outdoor theater, though, in place of advertisements for local businesses or a refreshment stand, something else was projected onto the giant screen: a reminder for patrons not to bring explosives into the complex. Welcome to the South Australian town of Coober Pedy, the opal capital of the world, where in days gone by, Saturday night at the drive-in would often end with a bang.

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Egypt’s emerald mines fell under the control of the Blemmyes in the Early Middle Ages, archaeologists find (Medievalists.net – March 2022)

https://www.medievalists.net/

Control over emerald mines in Egypt shifted from the Roman Empire to the Blemmyes during the Early Middle Ages, archaeologists have found. These are the results from research carried out in 2020 and 2021 by an international team of archaeologists led by Joan Oller Guzmán of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Digs were carried out at the Roman site of Sikait, a set of buildings surrounding Roman Egypt’s emerald mines, located in Egypt’s Eastern Desert. The area was known in Antiquity as “Mons Smaragdus”, given that it was the only place within the Roman Empire where emeralds could be found.

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How Myanmar “conflict rubies” could end up in your Christmas stocking – by Jackie Mallon (Fashion United – December 15, 2021)

https://fashionunited.uk/

During the holiday season the gift of jewelry is given as a symbol of love and celebration. Precious stones in exquisite settings are slipped into satin-lined branded boxes, and purchased by well-intentioned consumers to present to their loved ones.

Rubies from Myanmar are thought to be the finest in the world but the origin of these gems often involves horrific human rights abuses for people living under a brutal regime. New findings in a report released today by Global Witness spotlights a supply chain issue that is being largely ignored by many of the luxury market’s most aspirational brands.

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The Big Picture: Today, large companies mine some of the most popular colored gemstones, making it vital to examine their impact on local communities. – by Brecken Branstrator (National Jeweler – October 25, 2021)

https://www.nationaljeweler.com/

The colored gemstone sector is dominated by artisanal and small-scale mining. Though specific numbers are hard to come by, most sources estimate between 80 and 90 percent of colored stones are mined by small groups or individuals digging their own mines and extracting stones with rudimentary tools or collecting them in riverbeds.

And yet today, big companies are mining some of the market’s most commercially important stones, like Colombian emeralds and Mozambican rubies. Mozambique, in fact, has become the world’s most productive source for gem-quality ruby since the discovery of deposits there in 2009, according to GIA.

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Here’s What SSEF Found When It Studied High-Quality Afghan Emeralds – by Brecken Branstrator (National Jeweler – April 19, 2021)

https://www.nationaljeweler.com/

Basel, Switzerland—The Swiss Gemmological Institute SSEF conducted intensive research on high-quality Afghan emeralds and has released its findings for the trade.

In 2017, the lab started seeing a new kind of emerald from the country’s Panjshir Valley, nearly all of which were fine quality, SSEF Director Michael Krzemnicki said. As they do for all less familiar material, researchers at SSEF decided to study the emeralds extensively to find ways to separate them from others.

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Seeing is believing: what stone enhancements are acceptable? – by Christa Van Eerde (The Jewellery Editor – March 12, 2019)

http://www.thejewelleryeditor.com/

The aim of this article is to explain the most common enhancements or treatments for the ‘big three’, which are acceptable and within what parameters.

Most of the ‘big three’ gemstones – emeralds, rubies and sapphires – are in some way enhanced or treated. Only the very pure, perfectly coloured and flawless can escape any type of enhancement, and this is reflected in their record-breaking prices.

Perfection comes at a cost; the most valuable untreated ruby, the 25.59-carat Sunrise Ruby (below) fetched $30.3 million, which is just over $1 million per carat at Sotheby’s in Geneva in May 2015, far outstripping any price paid for a colourless diamond.

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Afghan Gems Have a Future, a Longtime Dealer Says – by Victoria Gomelsky (New York Times – November 22, 2021)

https://www.nytimes.com/

In 1972, Gary Bowersox, a Vietnam War veteran who had owned several retail jewelry stores in Hawaii, paid his first visit to Afghanistan. Determined to grow his burgeoning gem dealing business, he was attracted by the country’s 7,000-year-old deposits of lapis lazuli at Sar-i-Sang in Badakhshan Province, which for millenniums have drawn traders to this ancient crossroads on the border of what is now Tajikistan.

It would become the first of many trips, the most recent of which was less than three months before the Taliban regained control of the country and Western forces withdrew their troops.

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Burmese Rubies: Costly and Controversial – by Nazanin Lankarani (New York Times – November 22, 2021)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has long been a producer of some of the world’s priciest gemstones: pigeon’s blood rubies. Known by their deep, natural red fluorescence with blue hues, they command higher prices per carat than any precious stone on the global market, with the exception of colored diamonds.

But political conflict and trade embargoes have made rubies from Myanmar highly controversial for more than a decade, creating complicated sourcing problems for jewelers.

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Mozambique’s Illicit Gemstone Trade: Downward Spiral of Corruption – by Henry Pope (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project – November 10, 2021)

https://www.occrp.org/en/

The opaque nature of Mozambique’s illicit artisanal and small-scale mining industry has siphoned millions from the country’s economy, trapped its workers in a perpetual state of poverty, and has become a significant source of government and police corruption, according to a Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GITOC) report.

Buried under East Africa is a wealth of gemstone deposits, including rubies, sapphires, and garnets, to name a few. Rubies are the most sought after gemstone, with large deposits unearthed in northern Mozambique.

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