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It was donated to the museum by the financier J.P. Morgan. The thin, radiant, six pointed star, or asterism, is created by incoming light that reflects from needle-like crystals of the mineral rutile which are found within the sapphire. The Star of India is polished into the shape of a cabochon, or dome, to enhance the star's beauty. [12]
The fourth store followed a year later in August 1958 in St. Louis. [5] On November 7, 1964, GEM opened its first store in the UK. This branch in West Bridgford, Nottingham, the first out-of-town superstore in the UK, [6] was soon taken over by Asda. By the mid-1960s, there were reportedly more than a million GEM members throughout the U.S. and ...
The company's founder William Burke Belknap the elder (1811–1884) was born in Brimfield, Massachusetts, the son of Morris Burke Belknap the elder (1780–1877) and Phoebe Locke Thompson Belknap (1788–1873) and is not to be confused with William Burke Belknap the younger (1885–1965) or William Burke Belknap Jr.
The earliest donations were noted in the museum's annual report on June 30, 1899, when the institution reported that Dr. L. T. Chamberlain gave them two cut Yogo sapphires and 21 other sapphires for their Dr. Isaac Lea gem and mineral collection. [91] The record-setting 10.2-carat (2.04 g) cut Yogo is also held by the Smithsonian.
In subsequent decades, it was augmented primarily by gifts, including Andrew Carnegie's 1904 donation of the notable mineral collection of William W. Jefferis of West Chester, Pennsylvania (about 12,000 specimens), and a donation in 1902 of 2,600 gems from John L. Lewis, President of the Lewis Foundry & Machine Company located in Groveton ...
Llanite is a porphyritic rhyolite with distinctive phenocrysts of blue quartz (a rare quartz color) and perthitic feldspar (light grayish-orangeish). The brown, fine-grained groundmass consists of very small quartz, feldspar, and biotite mica crystals.
The Hope Diamond, which Switzer helped to acquire for the Smithsonian from Harry Winston in 1958. George Shirley Switzer (June 11, 1915 – March 23, 2008) was an American mineralogist who is credited with starting the Smithsonian Institution's famed National Gem and Mineral Collection by acquiring the Hope Diamond for the museum in 1958.
A rockhound's tools: a geologist's hammer and loupe. The amateur geologist's principal piece of equipment is the geologist's hammer. This is a small tool with a pick-like point on one end, and a flat hammer on the other. The hammer end is for breaking rocks, and the pick end is mainly used for prying and digging into crevices.