A day off from work, and a few new stones. This first one I cut for my friend King Errisson. I had been promising him a stone for some time now. Being a star himself, I figured this would be a nice stone. It's a large Citrine from Brazil cut in a frosted star design. The stone is 18 cts. I'm thinking it will make a nice pendant for him when he is on stage. Check out his site at www.kingerrisson.com.

Watch King in action with Neil Diamond, filmed in Madison Square Gardens August 2008



This next stone is an Umba Sapphire, that I picked up last month in Tanzania. It's a pretty lavender color, and is unheated.



These next stones are not posted for sale yet, as they were cut by request. A malaya garnet, and pink tourmaline. If they are not taken, then they will go up for sale.

Four new stones today, all from my recent trip to Tanzania. I have been working out a new round design that has a larger spread on the pavilion facets than the traditional SRB (standard round brilliant). What this does is create a bit larger main facet, that reduces extinction, and increases the color perception. These new rounds are both cut with this style.

This first Merelani Mint Garnet is not to be missed, this stone has everything going for it. The picture doesn't do it justice, in person it shows quite a bit of dispersion.



Spinel from Mahenge



Tanzanite



Chrome Green Tourmaline. The color on this in person is much more intense. The digital camera can not reproduce chrome green well.

Tags: Spinel, Mint Garnet, Chrome Tourmaline, Tanzanite

One new Garnet tonight. This one is a yellow Grossularite garnet that I picked up on my recent trip to Tanzania. These stones are mined along the Lalatema Mountain ranges. We had heard of this area where the "water flows out of the granite and into the village", so we did take a trip out there to try to find the mine location. Well, we found the village, and some stones, and also a dried up stream that was full of very very small garnet. The locals were very quite about the actual mine location. This is the first of a few stones that I did get from this location.



This picture is of Roger who I traveled with having a look at the dried up stream bed. He is standing in the middle of the "road". The garnet mine is somewhere in this general area.

Two more garnets from my recent trip to Tanzania. This first one is a large spessartite. These stones from Tanzania are never totally clean, they all have some small "sugar" type inclusions that really show up much more in photos that in person. This one has a few larger inclusions too that are eye visible, and it's priced accordingly. I think you will be shocked when you see how low the price is for a stone that is over 6 cts.



This next garnet was kind of an odd find. One of the miners brought in a very small parcel of these, none of them very large, but the color was quite odd. They are a much lighter pink, with a color shift going to a light purple color. This is the first of them that I have cut. It's 1.82 cts.

Tags: Spessartite Garnet, Umbalite Garnet

East Africa is know for it's garnets, and here are 3 new stones, all garnets, but all rather different. Click on each name to see the complete description of the stone.

Tsavorite



Color Change



Rhodolite

I'd like to introduce you to King Errisson

King Errisson has been the percussionist for Neil Diamond for the past 35 years, and is a good friend of mine. I recently built him a new website that we are pretty proud of. Have a look at it, and listen to some of his music. You can download MP3, of his CD's, or have them shipped to you. King just released his latest CD called Conga Serenade. King is from the Bahamas' and as the top conga player in the world his music features a island reggie jazz feel.

Anyone who buys one of his CD's from the site I just built, I'll give free shipping on any stone from my site.

This should just about the cover the cost of a CD. Just tell me that you purchased either a CD when you buy one of my stones, and make sure to let me know what you think of his music. You'll see a lot of King in August on the upcoming Neil Diamond TV special Hot August Night NYC.

Here's a link to the site. www.kingerrisson.com

Tags: King Errisson