According to my writing partner, globe-hopping gemologist Vincent Pardieu, a new strike of giant red spinel crystals has sparked a gold-rush mentality in the gem fields of Mahenge, Tanzania. Hundreds of miners have abandoned other gem producing areas and descended en mass on the area where red spinel crystals weighing 20-50 kilograms have recently been unearthed.
Pink spinel has been mined in this area since the early 1990s. A few reds have been found but up until now the most notable stones have been the pink-orange stones, with a color similar to that of some “padparadscha” sapphires. The material is found in alluvial deposits. The rough typically consists of small octahedral crystals or fragments that weigh 0.1–2 grams about 30% of which is facetable. READ ON: GemWise:
Richard is correct, I've spent most of October in Tanzania and Kenya visiting ruby, sapphire, spinel, Tsavorite, Tanzanite, Chrome tourmaline, moonstone, alexandrite and emerald mines...
In fact I was mainly helping my friend and fellow gemologist Richard W. Hughes.
Richard Hughes was at the origin of this expedition which purpose was to collect data for the future new edition of his book "Ruby and Sapphire"...
It was also a good occasion to collect more data about East African rubies and sapphires for the Gubelin Gem Lab.
It was very interesting to visit again the mining areas I visited 2 years ago with my former student Jean Baptiste Senoble and to visit also new places we couldn't visit in 2005 due to the numerous health problem we got then (I was immobilized for 5 days thanks to Malaria in Umba and JB got a serious food poisoning in Songea...).
This time we got lucky not to encounter any serious health problem, which was quite surprising as our group was more important than usual.
Besides Richard W. Hughes and me were several young gemologists recently graduated from different gemological schools: Guillaume Soubiraa (from France. He was already our travel buddy in Central Asia last year), Michael Rogers (from USA, Japan and Holland... who just graduated from AIGS in Bangkok), Warne Chitty (From Aspen Colorado who recently graduated from GIA and is currently completing his FGA in London). Montgomery Chitty (Warne's father) and Philippe Brunot (One of Guillaume friends from Madagascar) were also nice to join us on this expedition despite the fact that they were not involved in gemology or in the gem trade.
It was great to travel with such a motivated group of young gemologists willing to discover gemstones in the field...
As Richard Wise said, we visited during our expedition the Mahenge spinel mines. There several giant spinel crystals were found recently.
Another thread in the forum was reporting the event:
http://gemologyonline.com/Forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3926
We plan to provide very soon a report to Colored Stone magazine about our visit. I hope that it will interest you. Of course in few weeks you will be able to read more about this expedition in www.ruby-sapphire.com and in www.fieldgemology.com as we will have completed to write our report.
Of course we will keep you informed about these releases.
Until then I invite you to read, if you are interested in gems from East Africa, the report from our previous expedition during summer 2005:
The views expressed here are V. Pardieu’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of GIA Laboratory Bangkok (http://www.giathai.net)where he is an employee since Dec 2008.
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