Team L.A. County at the Tucson Gem shows

We are the staff at the Mineral Sciences Department at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Associate Curator Dr. Eloïse Gaillou, Curator Emeritus Dr. Tony Kampf, and Collections Manager Alyssa Morgan. This blog is for friends, colleagues and members, anyone interested in hearing about what goes on behind the scenes in a mineral museum.

Much of the mineral specimens in our collection come from donations. We go to mineral shows for a number of reasons. First, we go to buy gems, minerals and meteorites for the museum. Second, we go to catch up with old friends, collectors, dealers, and other museum staff.  Finally we also go to exhibit pieces from the collection to show the Tucson crowds what the L.A. County Museum has to offer!  We have a fundraising group called the Gem and Mineral Council that museum members can join for additional yearly dues. We offer lectures, classes, field trips, parties and other random mineral related activities. Money raised by the council is used for aquisitions. We need to buy new specimens in order to keep the collection current (to get pieces of the new finds). We also need to be able buy specimens when a good opportunity comes along, like a nice specimen comes on the market that is from California (our specialty) or is a great example of a mineral we do not have in the collection and we have a chance to grab it rather than waiting for someone to donate one.

To kick things things off, we are blogging about our experiences at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, from February 2 to February 12, 2012!

First stop are the gem shows, with Eloïse Gaillou and Alyssa Morgan. Eloïse has been curator for exactly one week before we arrive, hah!  Fortunately she has been coming to Tucson for seven years, the last four as a Smithsonian post-doc. (She has done a lot of research on formation and color in gemstones including diamonds and opals). 

The two largest shows are AGTA (American Gem Trade Assoc.) and GJX (Gem and Jewelry Exchange) at the Tucson Convention Center.

These shows are for people in the gem and jewelry business. Members of the public can only attend as guests, but museum staff can register for these shows as buyers.

Eloïse is looking at gorgeous blue and pink spinels from Burma. Spinel: XAl₂O₄ where X is usually magnesium but can be other metals like iron, chromium, titanium or manganese). Spinel is beautiful and red spinel was once commonly mistaken for rubies. Later on it became a cheap alternative to sapphires and rubies but now that the secret is out, it is no longer cheap!

Almost all emeralds on the market are coated with oil, to fill in cracks and inclusions.  Only the finest quality stones look good without oil.

Tucson is the largest show in the world and dealers come from many different countries, it is a great place to catch up with old friends!

Necklaces, necklaces!  So much cheap jewelry, so little time (seriously, Eloïse set a timer, we had 30 minutes to shop).

This is Charles from Palladot, giving us a wonderful donation, a peridot gem cut from a pallasite meteorite!  Pallasites contain peridot (a.k.a. forsterite, a.k.a. olivine) in an Iron-Nickel metal matrix. They are believed to be the core mantle boundary of a small planet that was destroyed by a collision in the early years of the solar system. Awesome, a gem from another planet!

These are neat, quartz in quartz!  Polished quartz cabochons with inclusions of quartz crystals.

Wow that is a lot of benitoite! This is a collection of 133 stones mined and cut between the 1930s and 1950s! A rare gem stone, benitoite (BaTiSi₃O₉) is only found in large crystals in San Benito County California in a hydrothemally altered serpentinite+glaucophane schist. As a gem, it looks like blue sapphire with high dispersion (rainbow colors, like a prism).

We have many beautiful opals on display in the Gems and Minerals Hall, but we do not have any from Ethiopia. The Wollo opals are really remarkable, some have what looks like the remnants of plant roots and some have what looks like cell structure (but probably isn't):

More aquisitions, this is pezzottaite, Ca(Be₂Li)Si₆O₁₈. A beryl group mineral.  It was found in 2003 in one pocket in a pegmatite near Antsirabe, Madagascar.  This was donated by Polychrome minerals, merci Laurent!

The find of the show, this is a 3.23 carat haüyne. Haüyne (how-een), is a rare sodalite group mineral. It is found as tiny crystals in alkalic lavas such as phonolites. It's electric blue color may be due to color centers created by sulfur polymerization! Large crystals like this are incredibly rare and we are thrilled to have found this stone from Eiffel Mountains Germany.

Tucson hotel shows

Now on to the mineral shows! Tucson is the world's largest show, there are actually many different shows at hotels throughout the city, all of these shows together last over a month! We need energy for this, so it's good to have a healthy breakfast!  Eloïse with Dr. Emma Bullock (Smithsonian) at Poco and Moms Cafe. 

Land of the Lost!
Eloïse, Tony and Alyssa take a break from shopping for minerals.

After running to the airport to pick up Tony, we head over to Hotel Tucson City Center, temporary home of Marty Zinn Expositions Tucson show, and we are immediately transported back to the late Cretaceous.  Seriously, dozens of plastic dinosaurs for your....yard?  Living room?

Allright!  Ugly rare minerals!  Really, how many emeralds can you look at?  This is effenbergerite (BaCuSi₄O₁₀) from Wessels mine, in Jordi Fabre's room.

These are also great, aegirine (clinopyroxene group, NaFeSi₂O₆)  with smoky quartz and feldspars from Malawi.

Tony and Eloïse are looking at nice specimens of hematite epitaxial on rutile. Epitaxial growth means one mineral grows on top of another mineral and it grows in the same crystal orientation as the first mineral.  Hard to visualize if you are not looking at examples, maybe we should make a special display.  It's important, epitaxy is one common way to create semiconductors!



















One way to draw a lot of buyers into your room is to have free wine!  Even better, make them mineral-themed wines!

Good strategy, the wine worked!  We bought this amethyst "scepter" from Hallelujah Junction, Lassen County, CA. A scepter forms as the amethyst grew like a cap on the smoky quartz base. This mineral comes from a deposit on a mountain (Peterson Peak) that straddles the CA-NV border. Most minerals fall down into NV but this one came down on the CA side so we had to have it for our CA display!

Museum staff comparing notes (bragging about what great things they found) over lunch.  Alyssa, George Harlow (American Museum), Tony, Jamie Newman (American Museum) and Cara Santelli (Smithsonian).

By the way, if you've never been to Tucson, the Sonoran Desert is beautiful! 

At the Westward Look hotel, a high-end venue.  This tourmaline, a famous "blue cap" from the Tourmaline Queen mine in San Diego County used to be on loan to the L.A. County museum. Now we might be able to buy it if we had a few million dollars.

Amazing lavender and blue tourmalines also from the Queen mine. These are sort of new on the market after being hidden in a private collection for many years...anybody want to buy us one? 

Fun times, (top) at Sky Bar with Mike Rumsey, curator at Natural History Museum London,  French mineral dealers Laurent Thomas and Christophe Gobin (middle) Cara Santelli and Emma Bullock, both from Smithsonian (bottom) Tracy Worthington from Harvard, Jamie Newman from the American Museum and Raquel Alonzo-Perez, new curator of Harvard Mineralogical Museum.

In honor of Tony's recent retirement, there were many celebrations. Actually not just Tony, another giant in the field, Carl Francis, curator of the Harvard Mineralogical Musuem retired last December. He and Tony are great friends and started their curator jobs the same year, 1977. This is a dinner party for musuem curators from around the world to toast Tony and Carl!  Speech!

Old friends and colleagues, Carl Francis, Jeff Post (Smithsonian), Tony and George Harlow (American Museum).

Tony and Carl with their successors, Eloïse and Raquel!

Tucson Main show 2012

The last weekend at Tucson, the Tucson Gem and Mineral Society show (TGMS), we call it the "main show". This show is the largest single mineral show and is held at the Tucson Convention center. This is in some ways the most important show for us as museums are asked to bring a display to the show. This is a great way for us to show off our collection to an enthusiastic crowd who would not otherwise see it in L.A. Also, TGMS partially subsidizes the cost of our trip in exchange for the exhibit we put together, so good deal!

There is a theme to the show every year, last year was a good one, "Minerals of California"!  This year, in honor of Arizona's centenniel the theme is "Minerals of Arizona".

Setting up L.A. County's exhibit: "The Ben Frankenberg Collection of Bisbee Minerals". Copper, silver and gold mining in Bisbee, AZ began around 1880. For many years the mines at Bisbee were among the world's largest. Ben Frankenberg owned a general store in Bisbee and collected some fine copper mineral specimens from the early days. His collection was donated to NHMLAC by his daughter Bobbi Frankenberg.

Done!  Looks great!

Amazing Bisbee malachite (Cu₂CO₃(OH)₂) owned by the Smithsonian Institution.

Some of Alyssa's favorite minerals on exhibit were from the mine at Morenci, AZ.  Such cute malachites and azurites.

There are many education themed exhibits as well!

This is an unbelievable gemmy tanzanite crystal, it must be about 10-12 inches tall.

Beautiful tourmaline from the Santa Rosa mine in Brazil.

 Eloïse bought this unusual aquamarine crystal for the collection. The termination was etched and a spessartine garnet grew inside.