Gems & Precious Stones Of North America

By George Frederick Kunz
Dover Publications, Inc
1968 ISBN 0-486-21855-4

Edward Oslon (Curator of Mineralogy, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago) writes:

When the early Spanish explorers first entered the North American continent it was the overwhelming desire for precious stones and metals that lured them on. DeSoto, for example, trekked over the entire southeastern quarter of what is now the United States, led on by rumors and tales of fabulous gems and golden cities. He perished having found only a small quantity of freshwater pearls for his trouble. He was not the only one to die unrewarded; the bones of Spanish gold and jewel seekers littered the continent from California to North Carolina, from Central America to northern Kansas. A goodly amount of gold and silver was acquired in Mexico and Central America, and a few gemstones turned up now and then, but it rapidly became apparent that North America was not going to be a fabulous source for precious stones. Today, with the advantage of 400 years of hindsight, the dogged crisscrossing of the continent by these treasure hunters seems foolish to say the least. North America has been no Golconda.

Despite the fact that North America has produced only a handful of gemstones, in contrast to Africa, India, Ceylon, South America and parts of Europe and Asia Minor, which have all been rich sources, the old fever to find diamonds, rubies, emeralds and other stones has never fully abated. Every year Arkansas draws hundreds of diamond seekers; Wyoming attracts ruby and jade hunters; Minnesota and Iowa have their agate hunters; Maine and North Carolina their aquamarine prospectors, and so on.

Until 1890 occurrences of gemstones in North America were matters principally of local knowledge shared only a few avid collectors and specialists in the gem business. Then, in that year, George Frederick Kunz published the first edition of this book, Gems and Precious Stones of North America. It represented years of intimate experience with the gem industry in America as the mineralogical consultant to the largest and most important gem and jewelry house in the United States, Tiffany and Company of New York City. The book is something of a milestone, for it was the first to describe the locations of any and all gem occurrences on the North American continent. As such it is not a textbook or treatise on gemology but primarily a guide to the collector of precious and semi-precious stones; it tells where they occur and something of their history, archaeology and lore. It was, at that time, a unique treatment, but less than six years later a learned German mineralogist, Professor Max Bauer of the University of Marburg, published a major book, Edelsteinkunde (Precious Stones), which treated worldwide occurrences of gems in the manner Kunz had used for North America.

Since gemstones are fundamentally rock-forming minerals, they fall under the wing of the professional mineralogist, who unfortunately is primarily concerned with them as minerals, and too often in an abstruse and academic way that does not interest the gem fancier. This book, on the other hand, was written by a mineralogist whose professional concern was gem minerals only. Such specialists are not common. In fact, as a professional mineralogist on the staff of a company such as Tiffany, Dr Kunz was something of a rare bird. His predilection for minerals as gems is evident in this book.

Primarily the book serves as a source book for information on gem occurrences, and contains a wealth of specific facts about the quality, size and quantity of the rough gem material found in any particular place. For example, within three pages (140-142), twelve localities for ornamental petrified wood are discussed in detail.

Most gem localities in North America are, unfortunately, a one-time thing; one or a few stones of good quality are found, and that’s it. This continent has never had a major gem mining operation even remotely comparable to the Kimberly diamond district in Africa or the emerald mines at Muzo, Colombia. As Kunz himself pointed out (p.7) “The daily yield from the coal and iron mines would exceed in value all the precious stones found in the United States during a year.” Nevertheless, some districts have been fairly consistent producers of gem material, albeit not in large quantities. For these areas the book indicates production figures and the annual value of particular gem materials.

As one reads this book one becomes aware that its author was captivated by the legend, lore and superstition associated with precious stones. The story of Aztec turquoise (pp.62-64) and the history of New World pearls from Colombus’ first contact with them onward (pp.240 ff) are examples of the historical and archaeological vignettes interspersed in the text. The whole subject so fascinated Kunz that in later years he published three full length books that dealt primarily with folklore and superstition connected with gems: The Curious Lore of Precious Stones (1913), The Magic of Jewels and Charms (1915), and Rings for the Finger (1917).

Perhaps the most unique feature of the book is the intriguing description of pearls in the New World (Chapter XII). This section is a kind of book within the book, and certainly represents the most detailed compilation of information and history of the American pearl fishing industry up to that time. This particular topic deeply interested Kunz and in 1904 he and Charles H Stevenson published The Book of the Pearl. This was a definitive work on the subject, based on Kunz’s intimate knowledge both of pearls as mineralogical objects and the pearl fishing industry; from 1892 to 1899 he served as special commissioner on American pearls for the United States Fish Commissioner.

Besides the books already mentioned, Kunz published widely on a great variety of mineralogical and gemological matters, and even made occasional contributions to the subject of meteorites. He was a prodigious writer. In an active career of almost sixty years he wrote a total of 531 articles, papers, reports, books, etc. This averages out to between nine and ten publications per year. This tremendous output of written material was very probably the result of the same strong self-motivation that made Kunz the self-made man that he was.

George Kunz was born in New York City in 1856. After a public school education he attended the famous Cooper Union, but he never received a formal degree. It was at Cooper Union that he began to plan for a professional career. He once wrote about “the Cooper Union, in whose laboratories, lecture rooms and library (I spent) useful, profitable evening hours for several hours, at a time when there were no opportunities of a similar nature in the City of New York.”

Before Kunz went to high school he had begun collecting minerals in the New York-New Jersey area around the city. The (then) recent excavations in the Bergen Hill, New Jersey, are—the site of a large number of rare and attractive minerals—provided him with a fairly sophisticated collection, and by the time he was fourteen years old he had already begun an active series of exchanges with collectors both in the United States and abroad. These exchanges allowed him to put together a number of well-rounded mineral collections and before he was twenty years old he had sold a major collection to the University of Minnesota. In the following years he established his reputation a knowledgeable mineralogist by building and selling mineral collections to a number of institutions, colleges and individuals, including Amherst College, the New York State Museum in Albany, the Field Museum in Chicago, and Thomas A Edison. His reputation grew accordingly and he was only twenty four years old when he joined Tiffany and Company as their gem expert. By the time he had been with the company for twenty years he had visited most of the gem producing localities in the United States, Mexico, Russia, Asia and Australia. One result of these travels was the formation of two major gem collections which were purchased by the famous J P Morgan in New York City. Kunz became, in a sense, a modern-day Tavernier, searching the world of gems. It was largely through his efforts that Tiffany acquired the now famous 128.51 carat Tiffany diamond, which the company still owns today.

Over the years his fame as a gem expert spread and in 1898 he received a honorary M A degree from Colombia University. This was followed by an honorary Ph.D from the University of Marburg, Germany, in 1906, and honorary D.SC from Knox University in 1907. He also received decorations from several foreign governments: the Legion of Honor (France), the Order of St.Olaf (Norway), and the Order of the Rising Sun (Japan). In addition, he held various offices in numerous professional societies and was, for fourteen years, an honorary curator of gems at the American Museum of Natural History. Although Dr Kunz was offered the directorship of the U S National Museum in 1904, he declined the honor and remained with Tiffany and Company throughout his career. He died in 1932.

Gems and Precious Stones of North American went through two editions. The present volume is a reprint of the second edition (1892), which differed from the first in that it included an appendix which Kunz wrote to cover occurrences of North American gems not covered in the text of 1890. By the very nature of this book age cannot detract from its utility. The locations of precious stones which are described cannot have changed over the seventy five years since the book was originally published. In fact, the only major annotation one might make today is to note that Kunz defines the unit of weight used in the gem industry, the carat, as equal to 205 milligrams (pp.13-14), and that over the intervening years this has been redefined to be 200 milligrams exactly. Thus, when carat weights are mentioned in the text they should be adjusted slightly upward, by a factor of 1.025.

Most of the readers of this book will undoubtedly be gem and mineral collectors, lapidary hobbyists, and rock hounds seeking to ferret out old gem occurrences for future collecting trips. On the other hand, there will be those readers relatively uninitiated in the field of gems and minerals who will pick up this book with the thought of finding out something about gems and their history on this continent. The book will serve both groups of readers equally well, for although it was written primarily to document the numerous scattered and unrecorded gemstone occurrences on the North American continent, it stands also as the first and foremost history of the gem mining industry in America.