Starting a few threads to create a repository for verified (non-turquoise) stone examples for reference. To post a pic here, let’s define “verified” as you have provenance or the word of the person who mined or created the stone/piece and can say 100% that’s what mine it came from. As much as I treasure the expertise of this group, we probably shouldn’t count the collective guesses of the forum as verified, though.
Thought it’d be fun to see what we have and help everyone with identification! Non-turquoise stones on this thread…go!!
Hope it is OK to post slabs and stones that are not in jewelry.
I have a home based lapidary/jewelry business and way too much “inventory”. of rocks to cut and slabs.
I also love rock hunting.
Here are some of my favorites that are often used to make jewelry.
Morgan Hill Poppy Jasper, California. Interesting story. The rough I used to make these cabs was collected by a member of the road construction crew. An area was being dug to construct a road and the vein of this beautiful stone was discovered.
Natural untreated “Angelwing” Variscite from the miner! Ron Alexander of Skyhorse Industries! He said it’s about a mile from the “New Lander” mine. I used a flash to show the detail. The last one is without a flash so it’s a little blurry but it shows the uniform minty green color on a black background that the flash doesn’t really capture!
Similar to Labradorite, this is Wisconsin Moonstone. A friend and her parents collected this with the local gem and mineral society in the early 1980’s. She gave me a lot of it. Location: Wausau, Wisconsin. What is now the HWY 51 and HWY 29 interchange. There is another location, a few miles from there. The owners host Moonstone collecting days throughout the Summer.
These are some of the photos I took of the polishing process.
My husband bought a piece of the Leopard Skin Jasper, it’s so cool! And we have a big piece of Labradorite. I’ve never heard of Wisconsin Moonstone; it really looks like Labradorite.
@AC, one of my first posts was this ring This stone puzzles me Do you think it looks like Angelwing Variscite? Just curious , because I don’t know for sure what it it.
The WI Moonstone has only been found in a small portion of Marathon County. It usually does not have flash colors other than blueish.
It is hard to polish, too.
I have no clue really. I got the impression that Angelwing was a relatively new mine and yours looks to have some wear on it. Maybe it’s actual New Lander variscite!
Maybe. It will stay a puzzle! I got that ring in '92 so it is a bit older. Thanks for looking! It’s always been confusing, cuz they told me it was turquoise. Your stone is beautiful.
@fernwood@AC I know this one! Dallasite is named after Dallas Road – a seaside road in Victoria, British Columbia – because it was first discovered on the pebble beach at the foot of the cliffs there. (Sadly, I have looked through the pebbles on that beach many times and failed to find any!)
As for why the road is called Dallas, it seems to have been named after Alexander Grant Dallas, the representative of the Hudson’s Bay Company on the Pacific coast (1857-1861), with headquarters in Victoria. So, no connection to the Texas city of the same name, alas!
My favourite Canadian gem is ammolite. To quote Wikipedia, it’s “an opal-like organic gemstone found primarily along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains of North America. It is made of the fossilized shells of ammonites, which in turn are composed primarily of aragonite, the same mineral contained in nacre, with a microstructure inherited from the shell. It is one of few biogenic gemstones; others include amber and pearl.” It’s also sometimes known as korite – a trade name given by the Alberta mining company of the same name.
The highest grade gemstones come from the deposit near Drumheller in Alberta, Canada. I visited the town years ago (it’s also famous for its dinosaur museum, Drumheller also being the site of an extraordinary find of dinosaur bones). Many shops sell ammolite along with fossils, and one had a huge, probably priceless, specimen of ammolite on display inside the front door. I don’t have a photo of it, but it looked a lot like this.
Incidentally, according to Wikipedia, ammolite from lower-grade deposits from the American Rockies is also used by Zuni and other Native American craftspeople in the southwestern United States. Unfortunately no citation was provided for the latter. I Googled and found a couple of examples of Zuni fetishes that were more ammonite [fossil-grade] than ammolite [gemstone-grade], but if anyone knows of gem-quality use by Native Americans, I would love to see it.
Here are a couple of photos from the Wikipedia entry. Here’s a piece showing some of the structure of the underlying ammonite shell:
And a piece of unprocessed ammolite with “dragonskin” texture:
Finally, a couple of ammolite pendants that I bought quite a few years ago:
, because I don’t know for sure what it it.
