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Identity HelpWhere can I get sapphires analysed for provenance?

30th Jul 2018 18:43 UTCNick Gilly

Many years ago I bought a small bottle full of sapphire crystals from Gregory, Bottley & Lloyd in London. They were labelled as coming from Montana, and at the time I had no reason to question this. However, the internet changed that, as I discovered that Montana sapphires tend to be plate-like in form, and these crystals are the more typical spindle and barrel shape. Here's a pic, from an old thread I started, when I was trying to determine whether Montana was the correct locality:

[img]https://www.mindat.org/forum.php?file,6,file=617,filename=Montana-sapphires2.jpg[/img]

The colour is more cornflower blue to royal blue, as that scan seems to show up violet hues more. The consensus on the original thread was that they weren't from Montana.

Yesterday, at the Kempton Park Rock & Gem Show I got chatting to one of the dealers about this, and mentioned that Chris Cavey had looked at them and said that they were from Kashmir. She replied saying that it would be extremely unlikely, as the deposit had been worked out by the 1880s, and the chances of a lot of Kashmir sapphires surviving uncut to the present day would be astronomical, so the Montana locality was almost certainly correct. When I mentioned that they weren't the typical flat form of sapphires from there, she replied saying that the Yogo Gulch deposit does produce sapphires with the spindle & barrel shaped forms.

So, this got me thinking, is there anywhere I could send these crystals to find out a place of origin? Maybe Raman spectroscopy, or analysing the inclusions, and the bits of what look like kaolin/altered feldspar adhering to some of the crystals could offer clues? As it's a lot I'm not too bothered about a fragment of one of the crystals being consumed in the analysis.

I would love to find out where they are from. Don't the Kashmir stones have some pretty unique inclusions that would be diagnostic?

Thanks and regards,

Nick

31st Jul 2018 23:44 UTCIan Nicastro

I believe that GIA's lab will do origin on a Sapphire crystal, but it's probably a best guess based on various parameters observed, including the types of inclusions present.

I'm not convinced these crystals are from the localities you have discussed, especially not Montana, and I very very strongly feel this is not Yogo Gulch material. Here is a GIA article showing photos of alluvial sapphire from multiple MT locations: https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/summer-2017-montana-alluvial-deposits . Note that Yogo Gulch is not an alluvial deposit... the material from there looks like this: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bh2d1nblvxP/?taken-by=montanayogoandagate and this https://www.instagram.com/p/BhzVXuSF18i/?taken-by=bluelicorice (these are specifically from the Vortex Mine). Yogo material is usually small and surprisingly gemmy, and although Yogo pieces might look alluvial at first glance, if you put them under the microscope you can see that it is not the case and that the edges of those crystals do have microscopic growth faces: https://www.instagram.com/p/BiVZQ6LDiVZ/?taken-by=bluelicorice

I agree that the chances of you stumbling upon material from Kashmir is extremely unlikely because of how long ago the mines were depleted... specimens from there are so rare that I've never seen a crystal from there displayed publicly in person. As for photos to compare material... this would be the place to go: http://www.corunduminium.com/Kashmir.htm and an old photo here: http://www.palagems.com/kashmir-sapphire/

I believe that I see some light colored mica embedded in some of the pieces in the lower half of the photo, suggesting to me that these were schist hosted. Those specific pieces remind me of material from Badakshan, Afghanistan... but that is just a guess, and that location produces only very small amounts of facet grade material... it's usually just specimen quality which are usually larger and low quality crystals. Weirdly I have found that specimen quality sapphire crystals from this area tend to be radioactive, and have observed the source of this radiation appears to be crudely shaped greyish inclusions that I guessed were Zircon, but have never had tested. Some of these inclusions are quite large and easily visible with your eye http://www.corunduminium.com/Afghanistan.htm shows photos of the material I am used to seeing on the specimen market... but here is some of the higher grade gem material... http://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/fall-2016-gemnews-blue-sapphire-badakhshan-afghanistan?_ga=2.191732777.2090863180.1533076432-20629994.1533076432 I wouldn't use the color of your specimens as conclusive for origin as these crystals appear to have been heated. Also I have a bicolor specimen that is blue and pink from Badakshan, and several of your pieces appear bicolored. If you have access to a Geiger counter, I would try passing it over the pieces and see if you get a signal over 2-3X background levels.

1st Aug 2018 07:27 UTCNick Gilly

Thanks Ian.

Perhaps I should have said that I am in the UK. Are there any organisations in the UK that could do the same job as the GIA?

Your description and the photos of Montana material is what got me puzzled in my original thread, as they do look very different to this lot of crystals I have. The conclusion was that Montana was definitely not the right location. The colours on my photo above are darker than the true colours of the crystals. This photo was actually taken using a flatbed scanner at the college I was studying at at the time.

I do agree that Kashmir origin would be statistically very unlikely. Nevertheless, looking at the photos on the Corunduminium page on Kashmir, a couple of photos are the closest visual match I have found to these crystals, including the knobby forms, the patchy colour distribution, and the attached whitish matrix. E.g. the following picture:

[img]http://www.corunduminium.com/images/OldKashmir.JPG[/img]

Some of my crystals have partial deeper blue 'rinds' and are much paler internally. I'll have to try and do some more photos over the next few days.

I've seen those Badakhshan sapphires before, as some of the dealers in Pakistan sell them on eBay, and, although the colour looks similar, the crystals look different to these ones.

Thanks again,

Nick

1st Aug 2018 08:10 UTCBen Grguric Expert

Nick,

I don't know much about Kashmir sapphires but I would not discount that possibility on the basis of the specimens having to be very old. Gregory, Bottley and Lloyd had a lot of very old stuff in stock, e.g. from the 19th C Neeld collection and others. When it was still operating in the 90's I would seek out and find rare 19th century Australian specimens that had made their way to England and were basically unobtainable in Australia.

Ben.

1st Aug 2018 09:36 UTCIan Nicastro

Non of the Kashmir pieces have any mica on them in those photos. Also no bicolor Kashmir pieces.

1st Aug 2018 10:00 UTCJohan Kjellman Expert

Nick,

you may want to try your luck by contacting Eloise Gaillou at MINES Paris Tech (= Ecole des Mines). She was former curator in LA. She is in to gems and their identification by various methods, mainly diamonds but she did her thesis on French sappphires.

good luck

1st Aug 2018 14:07 UTCOwen Lewis

Nick,

There is convincing evidence (Le Huong dissertation, 2009) that, with recent advances in the accuracy of MS analysis, it can be shown that there can be greater difference in the chemical composition of crystals recovered from different adits of the same mine than there are between samples from mines separated by thousands of miles. This does not go so far as to say that certain location of the locality of origin is not possible, only that, surprisingly, the bar to certainty seems presently to be raised rather than being lowered.

1st Aug 2018 17:30 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

Identification of inclusions will at least tell you what type of host rock the sapphires came from, which would eliminate some localities from the list of possibles, although not tell you which of the remaining localities you could have.

1st Aug 2018 19:00 UTCNick Gilly

1st Aug 2018 21:29 UTCNick Gilly

Compare these two images:

[img]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1800/41979234140_4dd1c829ec_k_d.jpg[/img]

and

[img]http://www.corunduminium.com/images/12080802.JPG[/img]

Kind of similar, don't you think?

2nd Aug 2018 01:01 UTCBen Grguric Expert

According to the Corundum book (Hughes 1990) characteristics of the Kashmir sapphire rough are:

1. Partial coatings of a white, clay-like material that fills the pits of heavily corroded surfaces.

2. Velvety lustre which under magnification is revealed as fine lines intersecting in three directions at 120 degree angles. These may be rutile? or minute canals? Various investigators had different opinions.

3. In some cases some intergrown or included dark green or brown tourmaline. Hornblende and mica also occur as inclusions

4. Habit is spindle-shaped hexagonal bipyramids, with most of the blue colour concentrated at the tips and just beneath crystal faces. Strong colour zoning is common similar to the Sri Lankan material.

2nd Aug 2018 16:01 UTCPeter Slootweg 🌟

Hi Nick,

Again you provide us with an interesting find. The moment I saw the first photo it struck me as Kashmir material. I thought, it’s a bit dark, but the photos of the individual crystals below looked familiar. The habit, color distribution, white clay like material, corroded feldspar and small percentage of pink hue’s all fit Kashmir perfectly in my experience. I have seen only two lots of the material for sale ever. From one I picked a crystal for my collection, but both parcels were thoroughly examined for habits and associations and it looked exactly like your stones.

The rough Kashmir sapphires I have seen show only minor blue area’s that are mostly concentrated near the tops of the crystals. The centers always seem be be colorless and a bit milky, with any color confined to the outermost layer of the crystal. Under magnification the blue is seen to be distributed as tiny spots of blue which I consider typical for this material although stripes and more uniform patches of color do also occur like the Sri Lankan material Ben mentioned. The blue areas seem to bee more susceptible to corrosion/dissolution than the colorless area’s of the crystal.

Below is a photo, for educational purpose, from: Ruby and sapphire, a collectors guide. Page 69 by Dick Hughes. The crystals, from the collection of Pala International, are very alike yours.

They can also be almost colorless with the blue layer completely corroded. Below a photo of the Kashmir crystals on exhibit in the Ecole des Mines in Paris. These are the biggest I have personally seen from there but show almost no blue.

As far as I know the combination of this habit of sapphire with dark tourmaline is unique to Kashmir sapphires.

If you can find a tiny tourmaline on one of your crystals that may be an additional confirmation of the origin.

I guess i'm a believer on this one. 100% Kashmir sapphire. Nice!

2nd Aug 2018 19:52 UTCNick Gilly

Thanks Peter. You were spot on with the alexandrite ;-)

I would have bought those crystals in 1996 or 1997, shortly after discovering the Gregory, Bottley & Lloyd shop in SW London. Finding that shop rekindled my dormant interest in minerals, and it was back with a vengeance when I discovered the Kempton Park shows a couple of years later :-D I may have the label with the Montana location somewhere. Those sapphires have been sat in a box for the last 10+ years. I remember I paid £12 for them, which I thought was a good price considering there are nice gemmy crystals in that lot with classic blue colour.

I borrowed a UV pen torch from a friend yesterday and trained it over the sapphires. Maybe 6 or 7 of them showed patches of pink fluorescence, and one crystal in particular stood out. Looking at it under a light bulb it is clearly a blue/pink bi-colour specimen. I hadn't even noticed it before until the torch picked it out.

I can see some crystals have some mica attached and one or two have a brown mineral associated with them, but I don't know what it is. I've not noticed any obvious tourmaline. It's the white substance attached to the crystals that is the main feature. Some of the crystals seem to have strange warped forms and side-car crystals attached.

I wonder if this is old 19th century material?

3rd Aug 2018 10:43 UTCBen Grguric Expert

Like Peter I think they tick most of the Kashmir boxes. To clinch it perhaps you could convince a good UK-based gemmologist (e.g. Owen) to look for those fine lines which are apparently characteristic under the microscope??

They probably are 19th C specimens and almost certainly not Montana but even at G, B and L labels sometimes got mixed up. I have an example of an old Western Australian specimen from there where this clearly happened at some point. They also acquired pieces from old collections which occasionally were mis-labeled.

11th Aug 2018 09:38 UTCNick Gilly

Thanks again guys.

I've tried contacting Richard Hughes, firstly via the Ruby & Sapphire contact form, which returned an error message, and then via a direct email address. This was on August 7th. So far, no reply.

I'll try Eloïse Gaillou next.

Hopefully one of them will get back to me soon.

11th Aug 2018 15:53 UTCIan Nicastro

Nick,

Richard Hughes and his daughter run an active gemology company in Thailand. They have their own analysis lab there in Bangkok... http://www.lotusgemology.com/ has a different email and phone number on the contact area.

11th Aug 2018 20:42 UTCNick Gilly

Thanks Ian. It was the Lotus Gemology email address I was given.

12th Aug 2018 01:47 UTCOwen Lewis

Ben Grguric Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> ... To clinch it perhaps you could convince a

> good UK-based gemmologist (e.g. Owen) to look for

> those fine lines which are apparently

> characteristic under the microscope??

> They probably are 19th C specimens and almost

> certainly not Montana but even at G, B and L

> labels sometimes got mixed up. I have an example

> of an old Western Australian specimen from there

> where this clearly happened at some point. They

> also acquired pieces from old collections which

> occasionally were mis-labeled.

Drat you, Ben!

A whole evening gone - and most enjoyably spent re-reading parts of some of my books. To my mind, the best of all RWH's books remains his 1997 work, 'Ruby and Sapphire. It contains 10 pages of text and photos on Kashmir sapphire and the mining history there. That book's

bibliography alone is quite awesome. RWH was also chosen to re-write the Ruby and Sapphire chapters in the 6th edition of 'Gems', the gemmologists 'vade mecum'. As an interesting aside, it contains an interesting and fairly detailed history of competing US and GB interests in he Montana mining of sapphire. His second book (pub 2010) in the (currently) three-volume set in that name updates that history to 2008.

Kashmir sapphire also receives appreciable mention in the three-vol series 'PhotoAtlas of Inclusions in Gemstones'. 28 pics accompanying text in vol 3, just 1 in vol 2 and six in vol 1.

Be warned! First find your way to a decent microscope and range of lights and then to the PhotoAtlas. One has then passed the point of no return on the road to becoming a gemmologist. And that can be seriously damaging to your wealth :-)

12th Aug 2018 10:43 UTCBen Grguric Expert

Wasn't aware of the newer books. Thanks for that.

12th Aug 2018 11:31 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

There is of course RWH's - Ruby & Sapphire • A Gemologist's Guide published in 2017 which is basically a companion volume to Ruby & Sapphire: A Collector's Guide which all go hand in hand with RWH's Ruby & Sapphire book from 1997.

If you are in to gems then you should have these books.

12th Aug 2018 14:53 UTCNick Gilly

What's the difference between the original 1997 book and the Gemmologist's and Collector's Guide, apart from updates?

These prices for the original book are just crazy:

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&an=Richard+Hughes&tn=Ruby+%26+Sapphire&kn=1997&isbn=

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ruby-Sapphire-Richard-W-Hughes/dp/0964509768/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1534081784&sr=1-2-fkmr0&keywords=Ruby+%26+Sapphire+Richard+Hughes+1997

Even the latest book is way out of my reach:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ruby-Sapphire-Gemologists-Richard-Hughes/dp/0964509717/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1534081784&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=Ruby+%26+Sapphire+Richard+Hughes+1997

I could get some very nice specimens if I had that money available!

12th Aug 2018 15:56 UTCOwen Lewis

@ Nick,

I warned you! '... seriously damaging to your wealth! :-) ' Actually, the Abebooks offering seems attractive, bearing in mind it's one of a special limited edition of 50 that was given to John Sinkansas and by comparison to the Amazon prices for the standard edition of the same work.

@ Keith,

I have not bought (yet) the 'Gemologist's Guide', imagining that it has (despite the title) quite limited technical information than is not sufficiently presented in his original 1997 work. Do you have the new book and what is your opinion of it?

12th Aug 2018 16:15 UTCKevin Conroy Manager

Bookfinder.com has some cheaper vendors for Ruby & Sapphire.

12th Aug 2018 16:24 UTCNick Gilly

Thanks Kevin. The cheapest one on that list seems to be called 'Ruby & Sapphire (Corundum)' and published in 1991. Is this yet another version? It's earlier than the standard editions.

12th Aug 2018 16:28 UTCKevin Conroy Manager

Nick, I'm not sure as I don't have any of these.

13th Aug 2018 08:26 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

Owen

When I am back home I’ll comment on the differences. Currently 200 kms away and will be for a few days.

13th Aug 2018 17:05 UTCOwen Lewis

Thanks Keith, I look forward to your views. I find the two of his books that I have (plus his corundum contribution in 'Gems and his 'Tanzanite' monograph from the Mineralogical Record) enjoyable and insightful in all manner of ways. In '- Collectors' Guide' a truly unexpected and powerful insight came from his photo of two Tadjik border guards. The bone structure of those faces shows little/no Asian lineage - or even

of Russian slav from some four hundred years of close associations with Russia. Rather, in looking into those faces, one sees a bloodline from the Ionian and Agean seas, brought to this, the Roof of the World by Alexander the Great, well before the birth of Christ

19th Aug 2018 20:29 UTCNick Gilly

An update on this:

I had a reply from Eloïse Gaillou. She suggested in order:

GIA - London branch. I phoned them and they are just a teaching branch, with no gemmological labs

Gem-A Association - no longer have a lab in the UK

Natural History Museum - I managed to speak to someone from their Core Research department and he suggested emailing them with some background and some pictures. I have therefore done this, and, as the first email bounced with the pictures attached, I included the link to this thread which includes the more recent pictures.

Hopefully more soon.

24th Aug 2018 07:45 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

Owen

As promised, I have now uploaded a review of three of Hughes's books

Cheers

24th Aug 2018 22:57 UTCNick Gilly

Many thanks for this Keith. That is very helpful. So the book to get would be Ruby & Sapphire: A Gemologist's Guide. It would appear to be an updated and expanded version of the 1997 publication. Still expensive but a lot more affordable. It's listed as $285 on the Ruby & Sapphire website, which is a lot better than the £561 being quoted on Amazon.

Still no reply from the Natural History Museum on the sapphires yet.

24th Aug 2018 23:55 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

Yes Nick

I'd get it direct from Thailand

You won't be disappoointed

Cheers

25th Aug 2018 21:27 UTCOwen Lewis

I just read your reviews of all three of Dick's book. Very fair I thought. For me, a book intended as a work of reference has to meet certain criteria, In particular:

- It needs in its dimensions to be a suitable travelling companion.

- By dimensions and weight, it also needs to be read for long periods, cradled in one's lap.

- It also needs to be a good companion on the workbench where it can expect to spend much of its life when not stored away. This makes the case that such books need to have a mark and liquid resistant covering and lie open easily at any page without breaking its spine .

Along with all this, any reference book cannot, therefore, be a coffee-table book -a swanky possession intended to advertise the life-style of the owner and, like as not, never be read even just the once. As you make clear in your reviews, it seems I'm not alone in such thoughts. If Nick does proceed to a buy, I agree with your opinion that it is the 2017 book that he should be getting and just put up with having to treat it with especial care throughout its lifetime. For me, the situation is a little different as I already have the 1997 and 2010 books and remain unconvinced that there is sufficient more information of importance to add to my collection to justify the purchase of such an unhandy work of reference as is 'A Gemmologist's Guide'.

What I really need to do is convince Nick to buy a copy and bring it over to my place where, at a library table (card table anyway) he and I can make notes, side by side, of what of importance (if anything at all) is omitted from Dick's latest tome. Despite all the limits already noted, I have a sneaky feeling that the result of such an exercise will be that I too will decide to buy 'A Gemologist's Guide'.

25th Aug 2018 21:40 UTCNick Gilly

You're on Owen. If you give me $285 i'll buy it ;-)

26th Aug 2018 03:18 UTCOwen Lewis

Nick Gilly Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> You're on Owen. If you give me $285 i'll buy it

> ;-)

Monetize your nice alexandrite find and you have the cash both for the book and one or two quite good specimens - alexandrite even ;-) Gotta develop the entrepreneurial spirit, man. If you were to choose to go down that path, you could count me in as a buyer for more than the cost of the book ;-)

Think on the following lines: however valuable a mineral specimen may be expert knowledge is truly beyond price. Forget talk of money altogether and think in terms of desirability only and I think the same still applies. Every time, abstract knowledge is more desirable than is material possession.

'Stone Walls do not a Prison make,

Nor Iron bars a Cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an Hermitage.

If I have freedom in my Love,

And in my Thought am free,

Angels alone that soar above,

Enjoy such Liberty.'

11th Sep 2018 19:38 UTCNick Gilly

No reply from the NHM. I know the email arrived successfully as I got an automated confirmation response from them.

I wish I could get in contact with Richard Hughes. I'd be very interested in what he thinks.

12th Sep 2018 00:47 UTCIan Nicastro

Nick I would love to see some daylight photos (maybe some on a an overcast but bright day, and other photos with full sun). Your original photos caused issues for me as the white looked like just damage (not the trademark white clay) and the blue color was about 10X as saturated as your later photos. I do believe the only person I know that will be able to help you is Alan Hart (former director of the earth sciences collection at NHM), I can try to get ahold of him for you... but I need crisp in focus, bright photos to send him. PM me your email address. Your other option is this: https://www.gia.edu/gem-lab-service/colored-stone they will do analysis on rough crystals, and will try to give an origin if they can.

12th Sep 2018 03:04 UTCOwen Lewis

A couple of years ago, Alan Hart left the NHM to become CEO of the Gemmological Association of Great Britain, in which post he presently remains. I'd agree that the pics we have seen to date are of insufficient quality and variety to elicit expert comment beyond kind words. Photomicrography with a range of lighting effects are essential to demonstrate duplication of many of the diagnostic inclusions in Kashmir sapphire, for which John Koivula has set the standard.

My guess is that to advance this discussion, even the best photography will be insufficient - other than in support of a thorough report based on quantitative as well as qualitative analysis. Although AH is not presently with the NHM, his personal links there are strong - which might be fortuitous The NHM in South Kensington has a number of Kashmiri sapphires for which complete analyses are already to hand. If so, this could offer a valuable comparative analysis to an analysis of NG's stones.

12th Sep 2018 17:25 UTCNick Gilly

Thanks Ian and Owen. I'll take some more photos in better light at the weekend. Hopefully they will look better than the last batch.

GIA in theory would be ideal but I don't want all the hassle of sending the crystals to the US and back. A pity that their London branch don't do analysis.

12th Sep 2018 20:39 UTCOwen Lewis

It might help to spend an hour or three with the books discussed earlier in this thread before planning your photography and lighting in particular. Mail me if you want to come over and do that here.

As another thought, how about a pre-arranged trip to the NHM to look at (and maybe photograph?) all/some of their kashmir sapphires? It sounds to me like a really worthwhile idea. A preliminary start might be a visit, enquiring of the staff whether or not these specimens are currently on public display and whether photography of them is permissible.

18th Sep 2018 18:11 UTCNick Gilly

I meant to update this and forgot.

Ian Nicastro has very kindly offered to forward some new photos I took of the sapphires at the weekend to Alan Hart at Gem A. These photos are better so hopefully he'll be able to help. Many thanks for this Ian.

Owen, yes I think I may have to learn some photography techniques. We do have some indoor lights for filming (my wife does videos on teaching knitting) so I could experiment using these for indoor photography. They are daylight-type lights, although I have noticed that the recent Russian alexandrite specimen doesn't look quite as vibrant with these lights as in real daylight.

A trip to the NHM would also be good ;-) I haven't been there for quite a few years, and it would be fascinating if I could have a proper look at their Kashmir sapphire specimens. That is something else to think about.

19th Sep 2018 12:22 UTCOwen Lewis

Best of luck! :-)

26th Sep 2018 15:46 UTCNick Gilly

Alan Hart has seen the most recent sapphire photos and his immediate first impression on seeing them was "Kashmir". He also said that they could quite easily be an old Kashmir lot because Gregory, Bottley & Lloyd had a lot of very old material in their inventory. He certainly seemed very intrigued.

To get a more definite confirmation I am hoping to meet up with him in London, maybe the NHM so he can look at them himself, and maybe compare them with the NHM Kashmir crystals.

If Kashmir is confirmed, then there was a mention of a write-up in the Gem-A Gems & Jewellery magazine.

Fingers crossed!

26th Sep 2018 21:44 UTCNick Gilly

I've just been looking at some of the more interesting crystals under the loupe. Some have perfectly transparent zones or ends which hopefully will be good enough for studying inclusions under the microscope. One crystal, which is mostly encased in what looks like feldspar and kaolin, has a greenish-brown crystal attached, which looks like it has vertically striated prism faces. Could this be some sort of tourmaline? Next to this is mica.

These crystals definitely need to be assessed by an expert!

27th Sep 2018 05:25 UTCIan Nicastro

Lets hope it's a tourmaline, that would really help you nail down the location.

6th Oct 2018 16:15 UTCNick Gilly

The plot thickens somewhat.

I've been looking in my boxes of specimens and found the original label for this lot of sapphires. It simply says :

SAPPHIRE CRYSTALS.

Montana,

U.S.A.

The price on the label matches the price sticker on the bottom of the bottle so I know they belong together.

However, in the same box I found another sapphire specimen I remember buying from Gregory, Bottley & Lloyd. This one has a label stating it is from Sri Lanka, but to me it looks more like pics of Montana specimens, ironically. It's a waterworn transparent flat pebble, showing quite obvious greenish-blue to violet blue pleochroism. Quick pic below:

Maybe this is part of the explanation for the location mix-up?

Could this actually be a Montana specimen?

7th Oct 2018 04:50 UTCTom Tucker

Scale ?? It doesn't look like a Montana Yogo Creek sapphire to me. Yogos are typically quite thin in relation to diameter. And they typically don't have that typical alluvial appearance.

7th Oct 2018 09:08 UTCNick Gilly

Hi Tom. The pebble is 16 mm across and 5-9 mm in height. It looks like it's from gem gravels. It could be Sri Lankan but most have the rough spindle shaped-form still discernible.

7th Oct 2018 09:20 UTCNick Gilly

Sapphire

Gem gravels, Ratnapura, Ratnapura District, Sabaragamuwa Province, Sri Lanka

I've looked through the Mindat pics for Sri Lankan sapphires and only one looks similar:

So it could be Sri Lankan.

21st Oct 2018 16:16 UTCNick Gilly

Well, after getting back very promptly to my initial email on September 24th, there has been no more responses from Alan. I sent an initial reply on the 24th, another email on Sept 27th, and most recently yesterday. I hope he's getting them. I know he's busy and travels a lot but he has been posting on Instagram in the intervening time.

I'm thinking of trying his mobile no. this week, as this is going nowhere at the moment. Unless anyone has any other ideas?

Thanks.

19th Jan 2019 21:40 UTCNick Gilly

Since my several emails to Alan Hart have gone unanswered I'm going to phone Gem-A next week. I'd really like to get things moving with these sapphires!

PS I noticed that one of my photos does show an olive green vertically-striated crystal embedded in the sapphire crystal, which might be some sort of tourmaline:

21st Jan 2019 22:58 UTCIan Nicastro

Alan will be in Tuscon shortly, so it's a bad time to try reaching out to him again. To be honest, you would probably have had better luck if you had shipped me a couple of the crystals last month and I had tried to give them to him in person in Tucson (but it's too late to try that now in case things got held up in customs before the show starts). I feel at this point you have had visual confirmation that these are indeed almost certainly from Kashmir (thanks to the clearer photos you posted after that initial photo with the color saturation set too darkly). Just a couple weeks ago this was up for auction and is identical to your pieces, which is even more evidence to add to confirm the origin of your samples: https://auction5.mineral-auctions.com/item.php?itemID=25660 (before you try reaching out to Luciana, note that she is in Tuscon as well currently and likely not answering emails).

22nd Jan 2019 19:41 UTCNick Gilly

Thanks Ian.

I expect these crystals are from Kashmir but I'd love to find out more if I can. Plus I haven't been to the NHM for years, and a visit to Gem-A would also be fascinating.

That crystal is lovely, and went for a bargain price.

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