From mid-2021, newsletter articles are no longer posted separately here. Interested readers should scan through the newsletter headings under the ‘Newsletters’ tab.

FACETIPS – A GEM CUTTER’S NOTEBOOK

by
Duncan Miller


The faceting articles published over the past few years in the Mineral Chatter have been compiled into a single 128 page document, available for download for those interested in saving all the articles together. To download the pdf file click here.

A 29,18 ct cuprite from Onganja, Namibia, cut by Duncan Miller and now in a private collection in Germany.


Browsing Archive: May, 2020

COVID-19 eclipses the Amazonite clouds

Posted by Site Moderator Webmaster on Sunday, May 24, 2020, In : Lapidary 

by Jay and JD Haasbroek

I know for sure it was last year some time, but that’s about all I am prepared to admit to any sense of time or space in these times.

As was usual back then Verna Jooste was visiting round the kitchen table with me, and Jay was busy with stones in her adjacent cutting studio and joining the conversation every so often, with a stone in her hand. Verna, a teaching jeweller and artist, is always interested in the stone in the hand. She comes from a family of diamond c...


Continue reading ...
 

BLUE LACE AGATE FROM YSTERPUTS, SOUTHERN NAMIBIA

Posted by Site Moderator Webmaster on Sunday, May 24, 2020, In : Mineralogy 

by Jo Wicht and Duncan Miller

For several decades small mines in southern Namibia have produced an attractive banded agate marketed as lapidary material. The major source has been a mine on Ysterputs farm, producing blue lace agate. It was promoted widely by the late George Swanson who owned the mine, so this material with its wavy blue and white lines is quite familiar. What is less well known is that the blue lace agate from Ysterputs is accompanied by several minerals forming aesthetic, c...


Continue reading ...
 
« Back to posts
 

Make a free website with Yola