Gems from Russia

this also okay dear friends of minerals and gemstones welcome to our second lecture in the context of our exhibition at the natural history museum it's a national museum of natural history in luxembourg from dark to light thank you for your active interest um we have today our most successful webinar more than 100 people have registered already so that for us it's a great great great success myself my name is patrick michele i'm head of communication at the museum and your host this evening so the curator of our exhibition is also and also the curator of our mineralogical collection simon philippe presented a month ago a first overview about gemstones general overview today the museum scientific collaborator peter lichberg is presenting more precisely gemstones from russia so before i know now pass over to seymour philippo we will introduce peter lickberg to you a few words about the procedure if you have any question ask them write them in the chat we will pass them to peter after or at the ending of the talk the same applies to viewers on facebook we are broadcast live on facebook so ask your question write your question in the comment of facebook we will pass them also at the end of the conference to peter if you have any questions about the technology about how if something is going wrong on zoom so write them in the q and a in the menu bar of the zoom window and yeah that's all from me if you i wish you a very enjoyable and uh exciting lecture and now it's up to you simone to present peter thank you patrick so this evening i have the pleasure to introduce you my colleague and friend peter liegberg peter is scientific collaborator of my department at the national history museum in luxembourg and is expert in mineralogy of or deposit and especially in quantitative pegmatite we both are attracted by rare elements found in pegmatite and especially by german well generated in this type of deposit peter is a great interest in genesis of this exposition and history of money so you know peter is swedish and he starts very early to study mineral deposits in scandinavia it did civil geology and geology in sweden and then traveled the wall to describe vein containing crystalline situ to gain a better understanding of the specific process that created the most wonderful crystal on the earth he soon become an expert in the field especially in scandinavian russian and pakistan one and its hawaii is there today is also a member of the editorial board of the mineral local journal minarianville so peter has been working and live in luxembourg since 1997 we made this period and were directly connected during this time it became a true friendship with the same passion and mineral beauties and the scientific analysis we did some very rich travel together also so peter has an impressive collection with content through masterpieces of nature and is animated by a lot of research specimen some of those are presented in our special [Music] um exhibit from dark to light like these pieces especially these pieces we didn't talk about this one today but it's a very special species so peter has published more than 60 article and book chapter and has been demanded to speak at several international conference in all six continents in geology mineralogy and geology in the past 20 years so i don't want to talk more a lot of people are connected now they know peter very well so peter i give you the leave thank you very much for the introduction both of you and yes i can just put a word for the exhibit which dr simon felipe put together i just handed over 10 boxes of specimens so i didn't do much at all that was easy but to prepare such an exhibit and put it out and do all the text this is i think two years of work and it's very well foreseen and it's presented with some history some historical local pieces some local very old gems and some we come to the genesis of gents with the big hole with the igneous magmatic gem pegmatite specimens and then over to metamorphic and then also there's a side the part of gemology how you study how you see fake versus correct or oiled emeralds and so on and then there's the last section where the visceral can see from crystals to the cut stones to jewelry design so i think the main layout which dr felipe did that's an excellent thing now i will take you to one of the countries that we present we present in the pigmenta sections that four countries with pegmatites and i will now take you let's see take you to russia you get it it's perfect yes okay very good okay here we go so i will introduce you to russian gems from russia with love and i chose this picture i did some years ago just before christmas moscow is very very beautiful now it's a symbol of the aesthetic of russia i would say you can see the beautiful cathedral on the red square but also you have those treasures that are very little known they're uh great trenches in russian not only mineralogical museums in moscow only in moscow there are eight geological mineralogical museums which i think is the world record paris has three wonderful museums moscow has many and the same as saint petersburg also has several now what is the difference to most europe uh other european countries is that russia has some incredible gem deposits of course it's the biggest country on the planet and i will give you introduction to some of the history and to some of the deposits and when i was a small boy at the museum of natural history in my home city gothenburg in sweden there was a small emerald in matrix and a small heli door that picked my interest really as a small toddler almost three four years old i was very fascinated when i was eight nine years old i planned to go to russia it was soviet union at the time and impossible so it took me many many years to do my first dream chip and i went to see ural gem pegmatites and emerald mines and many war deposits in may june 1992 and it was really hard work so i was the first western foreigner first foreign out of soviet union since before the russian revolution to do this and i will share with you some pictures from this old time they're not the best quality and i will share newer pictures of beautiful specimens and geology so here is newer by by jeff skoval an american photographer these are some of the most beautiful gems from russia but because of the size of the country they have a lot of different gems and each one of those you see here i will describe a little bit in detail now if we look at the country it has 11 time zones so if you want to travel there all the new year you can have 11 times celebration which is in fact it's often if you're staying in a hotel that they will celebrate every hour is there anyone from kamchatka yes if anyone from next magadan oblast is somebody from irkutsk and so on which is quite funny now when it comes to geology if we start from the west there is not so much from saint petersburg to the euros or moscow to euros the kuala peninsula is very interesting a lot of rare minerals there are many many hundred species of which many are unique to the koala peninsula with some interesting summer of gem quality but very rare minerals we're not going to talk about those we will start in the ural mountains which are north south 2 000 kilometer long mountain chain so there was a collision between two tectonic plates 300 million years ago and i'll show you briefly geological map that all the structures are north-south going and if you make a cross-section of just a few kilometers you have from platinum gold deposits to gemstone deposits to emerald deposits and then in the plains of which you see the green area that is main named euro euros in fact the euro manchester primarily but there is a lot of gas and oil fields there and then when we come further east in siberia you see the brownish where becomes more higher mountains to the very south from novosibirsk and south delta mountains produce both many oars and interesting gems and if we go over to lake baikal in the south the biggest sweetwater lake on the planet at the southern end there's some deposits with spinel lasso right a little bit too south malhansk mountain with tourmaline by aginskoi here in this area the border to china mongolia we have some very old dado chilean sherlock agora pegmatite and grace and deposits and if we go north we have the akutsk mirni the big diamond fields here which were only discovered the last 70 years they did find diamonds long before that in siberia so here is just some of the russian gel pegmatites we're going to visit the aries and i write here the difference between the impossible and the possible lies in the man's determination so some people say i'm a little crazy but i was very very determined to go to see the minds in the euros even as young here is the geology of russia and you can see the euros as the white brown yellow line and you can see of course further east a huge area twice the size of europe which is very very right and they have a lot of interesting deposits now after the revolution we knew very little we knew like for instance the emerald from the euro mountains big emerald 20 centimeter we knew that they had been finding this from 1830 to russian revolution but we had no idea what was going on there uh heroes in details the euro mountains i've listened the photographers here which i'm very grateful to borrow some crystals and now if you look to the the red spots here are pigmented areas gem pegmatites i'm down in mountains and you can see it's sewn on the eastern side of the euros and up north i know i marked a region with a lot of quartz crystals i would just briefly mention and show some large crystals now from dark to light here is my son to to the right and in fact he has a couple of specimens in the exhibit here also from from russia the big tourmaline up here is his and so on and these old pieces are from russia in that case i will just introduce briefly igneous magmatic rock that means that is molten here they've come up to the surface this is in chile now now what if it doesn't reach the surface it will crystallize for instance if it's rich in silica as a granite and here you see to the left veins of pegmatite and to the right a thicker pegmatite vein this is from sweden here is the same thing which is starting to become pigmented granite and here is another granite to the left and pegmatite veining granite so it means pegmata means it's big grains so when a huge intrusion forms in the mountain origin it also becomes richer in the rare elements here you can see a little bit of metamorphic rocks with phagmatite which was plastic when the pegmatite intruder so you can see the shape is a bit rounded this is just to show you the different ages of the various pegmatites you see from california himalayan mountains the youngest euros around 300 million years brazil scandinavia those are number of pegmatite fields so we can see that during the formation of the earth there are very very clear periods when different ore deposits like diamonds men most are very very old not all and pegmatites of different types were formed we have point volume deposits one point this type in rappakivi granites are typical for this period of the planet and here are quite a few gem pegmatites just you have an idea around that don't only occur in russia but many there this is just a picture from one in norway but it's good to illustrate how large the crystals are up to a meter sometimes up to 11 meter or even more now the imperial court in russia they were known russia was perhaps the richest country in the world or perhaps it was china who knows at the time just before russian revolution and they were known for having incredible jewelry so was in this in iran in persia as they traded all the diamonds coming from golconda mines in india and they so russia they had a big cutting factory where they cut faster stone cabbage and made huge carvings in the catering work and they this is one of the things that russia is very famous for is the malachite here from isak's cathedral in saint petersburg to the left you can see the purple share white was only found the first time 1937 and only described i think 1978 by vera rogova and it's in fact magmatic it's you know we described metasomatic but the latest study has shown it's a magmatic formation and in the middle we have the rhodonite and the malacca so this is also typical it's not only um clear fastening grade material but also decorative materials that we can say is a gemstone for sure and here is more of the beauty of russia of course incredible now what we know when i was young and before i went to rashmasa was not much what was published in all books by first man which are right here here are first man books alabaska pragmatized very poor images there were small diggings in the surface between swamps in the forest we knew they had the most beautiful blue topaz in the oldest later they found in brazil and we will first go to euro mountains and then off to lake baikala marchands here you can see the geological map of urals and you can see north-south so if we make a cross-section we will look at the more detail we have granitic rocks i could would say in the middle and on both on the east and west of them we have rocks containing um which are more iron rich darker doughnuts and so on diorites we have serpentinites and where they come in contact with the granite intrusion you form both mineralization from solutions from the granite and just heating where you don't get elements necessarily from the granite but metasomatic and metamorphic deposits around and the most famous is topaz the first person that i could find so far came to germany in 1747 of topaz in russian literature they start to describe that it was in the early 1800s they started mining topaz but it was in fact earlier of course in those days they didn't care so much about writing down everything but i must say that the russian museum despite two world wars russian revolution they have an incredible control of all the information they are really really monsters i know many other museums in western europe are as well vienna museum london stockholm oslo have visited many museums germany also many german museums but really good information exactly when it came to the museum from home and so on and this is something we should never forget here's a beautiful from the mercinka alabaster pegmatites feldspar with smoky quartz and now here comes the important cross section if you look to the left here the pink in the right half is the granite intrusion to the right of it we have the contact with serpentinites here you will have the formation with barrel from the granite to form emerald and crucible some of it the new variety alexandrite which was discovered for the southern euros it's in this contact zone to the west here here we have pegmatite region the granite is dipping down some pegmatites are within the granite some here some are outside and here are other units here also what is not well known is on the alabaska river there are also marbles with spinel they might even corundum from some of the streams here and here i made uh with some of the main deposits on the basket mercinka and the purple was the amethyst here is a picture from mercinka village from a friend of mine's daughter who i found the friend in the usa that she was online and sergey borza was a geologist who worked in the mines here in the 80s and 90s when i first visited 92. so here i marked all the yellow ones are pegmatites now nearby are younger hydrothermal veins which are filled with amethyst and the russian siberian amethyst they were originally called mercinka amethyst and people couldn't remember the name then they started call them siberian amethyst but when i was a kid the best gemologist in my home city he still called them mercy amethysts and here is from idui river in the south of that same arduino intrusion a very famous found in 1926 that where a photo was taken of course there were very very few photographs from those days so when i go somewhere i always try to document with photographs the miners the veins sea and situ the pockets and everything found here you see a detailed map that was given to me by the it's all hand painted by the chief geologist of the last mining company who mined those pegmatites in amethyst veins so the chief jones came to visit me in sweden many years ago and gave me this map which was a great great honor and here is from my first visit first visits in 1916 underground and this was about as much as one knew about russian gem mines there's a very good illustration of it now was very dangerous times to go in russia here i'm with the chief geologist alexander roshkov to the right i'm in a pocket here you can see some this was a four meter big pocket pekkama type paints here are almost vertical uh narrow just two three four five meters most of them there is one which i will speak about later which is huge and there are some of them that which is pegmatite veins just many veins here were the crystals i saw on my first visits some beautiful i could buy the one in the middle on my second visit but they wouldn't even sell it the first time they were not interested in money and in fact chief joel is here alexander oscar he was very fascinated that i'm was a westerner who was not just interested in money but i was interested in the real geology and it took me one day discussion looking at geological maps before i even mentioned that they had mines open and then he said tomorrow we're going to see the mines and then during several days we went to see the mines and then i came back i was in may june 92 and because the old miners they worked between the swamps they could only work when the ground was frozen when it was minus 30 40 degrees in winter so i went back in january in 1993. just during such conditions minus 41 it was as coldest to see the real here is mercenca village now in mercenca in 1668 they found the first gemstones in the small rolling hills around rosinka and you wonder when i came there they were still very poor people they had been mining gemstones for hundreds of years more than 350 years and still they were not wealthy you see 1992. beautiful old timber houses some of them reminded me completely this one is russian style some were completely typical swedish and then i found out when they built this in sick mercenary in 1640 they sent a lot of war prisoner who were swedish sweden was attacking russia all the time i don't know why in the world we would do that we wouldn't know for sure so mursinka became extremely famous all over the world and still is but specimens are very rare because production stopped so to the left you see a beautiful specimen and i'll tell you more about this in a minute and to the right you see several of the best pieces found in the euros here is a mineral show in versinka and they have many the church in mercy's geological museum this is looking north and on the hillside the back side is the most famous amethyst mine the talianda start in the 1700's nearby river and here are the the map you can see the ketchenberg and you see alabasca mercinka vatica is amethyst mine sarah pulka are tourmaline mines but it's the same zone and down to the southeast you see emerald mines and the taco by deposits and here is the pegmatite field again it's not necessary here is very poor image but it's the only one i have from them across your mind when i was working and the young photographer you saw the picture from her sinker it's her father to the right sergey borsho and here he is to the left he collected this the largest topaz specimen blue topaz found in the euro mountains 43.5 kilo while he took it out of the pocket it knocked out all his front teeth he was a very good geologist so was the chief journalist now here is wendell wilson he is the chief editor of the mineral article record in the usa and he's an excellent artist that's besides the geology's mineralogist and here is his dream pocket the charts pocket from mercenca wonderful painting with the different morphologies of the topaz and here's another pocket here is one of the nicest single top pass cruisers i've ever seen from from this area one thing to mention is the first generation in most type of pockets barrels topaz tourmaline whatever it is they usually become larger and they may not be of the best quality then often you have a second and third generation sometimes a fourth inside the pocket of course you can have the very very first one in frozen in the matrix which i don't call the pocket i'm speaking about pocket generations here here is an h1 found by george's igor gurkov who works the microsoft mine here is in the ferzma museum and you see dated 1927 two more beautiful matrix and here is one fantastic in the main museum this belonged to ana nobel and you see the different colors of barrels here the one to the left was from 1976 in goldeneye mine typical topaz and to the right a green one this was found in the early 1700s so one of the oldest documented barrels from the area now this geological map which is taken from mineralogical almanac this is a wonderful magazine it was called world of stones when it started i think everyone in the west was absolutely astonished to be able to read russian authors or soviet authors i should say wrote about the boss mostly russian but also from other former soviet states and finally this came out about mercenca i highly encourage the authors that they should do that and these were two a man and a woman geologist uh living in illinois reserve and they wrote a fantastic book about mercenca here is a geological map what you can see the granite intrusions and the blue are the pegmatite veins that are connected uh sometimes in the grand is sometimes right next to and you can see some of the squared limestones here also here is the mine a specimen to the right is in fact three specimens it's a specimen with the champagne topaz blow topaz and green barrel are separate and here is the cross section of cassioni zamay so i participated i went there in 92 93 to participate in the mining they made the shaft a 30 meter made the tunnel 20 meter and mining tunnel at 30 meter and i saw many of the pockets i documented what they found i gave them the proper tools to take out the specimens however it was very strange of course the chief journal he was not always in the mind he had to plan and handle the whole operation so many of the crystals to the right you see the the upper two green ones from pocket 261 they were broken off and they went they didn't even have fragments of those crystals and they they had partly matrix to one of them so it was probably that the miners they were not had not been paid salary for a year at the mining company when i visited the first time therefore when i came back half year later i bought some specimens the chief journalist told me how how do you dare to come back how are you not afraid why should i fail well every whole village knows that you were the one who brought the money the first time and here they will kill anyone if they know you have 10 20 in the pocket and i will not tell now but i did have visit one night that i managed to escape in fact it was one of the first nights three miners who came to the place that was sleeping completely alone at the end of the village here you can see the beauty of some of the barrels some of them most of them i will discuss in detail and here is one that was found in pocket four which i saw at 28 meter depth a fabulous 16 and a half centimeter crystal 950 gram 16.6 is i think is 16.5 and has a black terminal in between the aquamarine and smoky quartz heliodore i think the very very rare few ones we see from yours are really the the best heliodores in the world in that they are not etched at all they're razor sharp beautiful beautiful yellow color some are deeper color some are yellowish green but they are just very rare to see a few museums the russian museums have a few luckily preserved and here is one of my first images of of hellidors more now i show you a great variety what is interesting is you see the morphology there from different on the left side you have laying one green to the very left the long one that's from shaitan gets doubly terminated so each deposit has a specific style uh with a few friends we have analyzed from many many and deposits to to look and look at them in more in detail this left crystals was 19 centimeter beautiful specimen to the right they're drilling in a pocket pocket number seven uh where i found a tourmaline that turned out to be a new species but in fact i found it in january 1993 and in august i think it was described as new species of a couple of crystals from unknown place origin in in southern california here is the variety of colors or barrels now there is no such thing as uninteresting minerals not even quartz somebody think quartz you find millions and millions of tons but every mineral tells a story of the formation of exact conditions how it formed and even in within the same vein or vein system it varies from one pocket to another even within a pocket can have different colors and different morphology the morphology will depend on the exact conditions on that specific spot in the pocket and here is another photo of some of the most lovely lovely pieces that was ever found here and if you look to the right the heliadore was found in pocket 261 12 meters is in fact 12.3 to 12.8 meter depth by miner balakin i know the man i've seen the pocket so when you document pieces it has such much more value than it's just from her sink in euro mountains now some may say why is that well from a historical viewpoint but from also genetic geological viewpoint if you have many specimens from one vein if you have many many from many veins in the same field you can do serious studies on them on anything inclusions on etching whatever you like but they need to be well documented here is a photo from my first visit my camera froze in fact so i photographed a lovely collection of one of the geologists there but the camera was frozen so i i could not change the setting of time or approach nothing it was very difficult and that the geologist had a wonderful genetic collection not the best crystals they were not allowed to keep the best crystals but for the genesis of deposit wonderful now is there life after death trespass here and found out i used this in in a talk about afghanistan and one could use it by russia because russia in the 1990s was very very dangerous it was complete anarchy sometimes you read here in the west oh it was democracy there was no democracy it was anarchy it was criminals from russia the one who could fight their way the one who got hand over a gun the one who could cheat and trick the most who were running everything so the serious scientists at university for instance to they didn't get salary so to make some money to buy food they had to go on the street to sell coca-cola once a day for a few hours to make a few pennies to buy some potatoes and the chief geologist of this mining village he had his own cow he was growing his own potato they had been running 300 mines but he had to do because they they didn't have any money and you can imagine the specimens i bought there they could pay the miners for a whole year back it was fantastic but also very dangerous for me so here is indications of mine 30 meter level these are all historical pictures now and in fact i've never seen any made by any of the russian geology so i was the first and last western visitor but i documented i have many many pictures many that i need to scan and the pocket to the left here pocket 201 on 30 minute level i will show you later one of the barrels that came out of there and here's chief geologist in the middle and sega barshop to the right that's the same one and then you think in winter the picture to the right is a picture taken by my friend nicola belenkov it's now he sent me pictures here during the weekend so in the weekend i put him here and young minnow collects heroes they are digging underground small places going into the mines even in winter and of course it's warmer underground but when i was there in january 93 the clay was frozen at 27 meter depth in the mine so here is digging one pocket i was the drilling again here you can see some of the mineralizations just around the pocket you see the garnish you see the short term links i took some barrels and matrix here i gave some to the museum of natural history in stockholm from this pocket here is beautiful star mike feldspars and here are some of the finest pieces they found in the caciones the barostopas is from the macrocharmine and almost all blue topaz from the euros is from microsoft mine even though usually labels on the same bracing the piece to the left is called the king lear and saint pittsburgh university and it arrived to their collection i think before 1885 so it's a very old piece here is a heli door a broken piece was cut by michael grave you said to the right and my wife made a design for a ring for herself but that has exact known origin this gemstone which i think is much more interesting than it's just a diamond from africa which is africa's very big and has many many localities so here is the green barrel that was from casiones and to the right you see a very rare sample in that it has a double terminate smoky quartz a small barrel and a topaz the three together is not so commonly seen and sometimes you even have a tourmaline in association with two of them the mining company brought this specimen in april 1994 for me to photograph so the biggest ones in the background belongs to the mining company and that was to try to ask for some more money to run the company in hard times ask money from moscow and he was testing of the color of the just color film here to the left rock carrier was dear friend he photographed this in the bridge museum long long time ago to the right is a fantastic old it was pictures in brown uh it's photographed from by james elliot for fine minerals international it's now in the meme museum and it was labeled as from mursinka which i believe it's now it's labels from illinois mountains i do not know where that information comes from and here is this from um hardwood mineralogy museum has two very old famous uh specimens the left one the green ones is doubly terminated from solotonagora and the one to the right levation now both i when i went there shortly after i looked at old documents about mines the depth how big they were and the dear friend in moscow he has done the same and we came to the same conclusion where it really is from probably there was one of the local richer guys working the mine levashin and they called his mind for lebastian which we've never found documentation in literature maybe it is somewhere and you can see that i appreciate having been there so i made the pictures december 93 and 2005 on my two sons with the specimens from this mine from pocket one and ninety nine in cassion itself to the left you see a famous old painted found in 1828 big helidor and this is the one it's from star civilian it's preserved in saint petersburg mining institute and my wife is ringing its own exhibit now at the museum it's in the in the middle and with the crystal behind it to the left uh here is to the left was in in the winter december 1899 to 1900 at 22 meter depth at seminiches they found several hundred kilo of those beautiful etched green uh barrels accommodates we could call them and this one was bought i have documentation was bought in mercy in 1903 so it fits very well with the what we find in literature here some more from to the right from very rare uh deposits on baikal and here from switzerland the one to the left it's it's um quarry south of the cattlemen where they took cowling clay from the weathered pegmatite and granite so you see both the helidor acronym saint depos the one to the right is from chukotka northern siberia in 1889 it was the world exhibit in paris and also in 1900 and the tsaritsa of russia was giving three large amethyst and they became world famous and you can look at that color to the left it has blue it has red it has purple the best amethyst from euros is really really incredible but it's very rare the best quality in any gem deposit if you mind for instance the veins around marsynca there are hundreds of veins with amethyst i spoke with the chief geologist that my many and he said about two percent of all amethyst is of gem quality two percent that means cutting quality and a few percent of those are really the top quality very very rare in just a few pockets and to the right you see one from artemia by mine and the mining company labeled depth 12 meter pocket 52. they said this number it's just a number but when i saw the geological cross-section of the mine i understood exactly where it was from that should not be a secret amethyst is not any strategic mineral but it was interesting it was still a secret uh even after soviet time so here is uh george igorkov young student mining amethyst in nadu and you see they do it in winter doesn't matter russian people are not fussy they had a very harsh living from 1917 to 1990 it made them they're not lazy they're not too afraid of working the people are interested in jolteon or they go out if it's minus 30 40 it's really not a big thing if it's minus 40 45 then it's starting to get very dangerous here is an old amethyst i showed you this picture when we saw by the church in mursin i said the background that was the minds that were started by italians and in the late 1700s and this crystal document of was collected in 1820 and here you can see that superb color probably because it's not all faceting great they didn't cut slackly so it's one of the few crystals that survived but had beautiful large amethyst in italian lines this one is no less colorful it's not the deep color but it's better color than it appears here it's not so great purpose beautiful beautiful purple it's a brazilian law twin with a phantom inside here's another doubly terminated here is now we come to the emerald pits of the euros the euros had the largest emerald mine in the world one half kilometer long i had no idea if they were still mining so it was a really big trouble to get permission to go baltimore sink and here i i had a whole list of mines i want to go to i was invited by the university professor at the university of geology and the history of gemology and there was a metallurgical company who helped me to have a car that would get a new driver to get me around but then why do you want to go who is paying for you well i wish somebody was paying i was just a very poor student i could barely afford him to fly to euros i didn't speak russian i know don yet vodka forwards i didn't even know spasiba previewed nothing and my wife who now happens to be russian since 14 she was my wife since 14 years i never speak russian with her but she said i was totally crazy to go it was very dangerous and it was said that the most dangerous place of all was in fact this emerald mine for the reason that criminals were drawn there to try to steal emeralds and try to make business of them of course i was invited by the director of the mind and the chief geologist and jolie so luckily i didn't have any problem with it but i only got permission the second last day of my stay in the catching burger and and that day there was no car available from university so i think they were told even though it was not soviet union they were still sensitive and i didn't know why they mined the emerald and christopher for strategic for beryllium so for military purpose if the metal beryllium has the same properties as aluminium but it's lighter so if you make some beams with it with beryllium in a jet fight or whatever they did with it it's lighter and you can save on weight or you can mix it with copper and you can have the feather it's stronger than feather steel you can vibrate two three billion times without fatigue so this we didn't know in the west and i think i found out after i had been there here's jolly you can just see uh in fact i will not show this old map so long you can see to the right here it says asbestos mine so they're serpentinites and to the left a better look on this map to the left here the pink is the granite so all along the contact zone here we have metasomatic it means that there is beryllium from the granite but it was solution so there are some pegmatized strangers but it's in fact a mica schist we could call it there are many other minnows except for flogger fighters chlorite many talc and so on and they're very very um complex deposit they've drilled down to 600 meter and you still find the emeralds at 600 meter so here you can see it's just very complex geology here's some old pictures from the emerald mines and to the right here you see one of the first underground pictures ever to ever take in here that i took to the it looks like it's black and white but it's in fact the color the mikey she's this is very dark here is the sorting of emerald emerald another barrel-based johnson carcass is very very good i highly recommend for anyone interest in the emerald different barrels including emerald with great literature reference which i went through when i was student at university i ordered every book that i could from there many came from moscow state university where they were so kind and lend it out to western universities already in the 80s and here is i think i'm one of the few who visited underground and in situ several of the emerald deposits in the euros to the up left and below is stratensky mine and to upright is marinski mine and here is a fun photo a friend in the old mining with the old mining telephone it's not a real emerald it is it's a simulation of wood which is painted but she was holding onto the phone and i handed this specimen to her here is a very old famous emerald this painting is in saint petersburg mining institute and they didn't know where the specimen was i had seen the specimen in the museum invention and here it is to the right very very beautiful large plate the largest beautiful plate of emerald from russia here is the mining offices and sadly some years later this was all the beautiful entirety was all gone and the building abandoned when they closed the mining company here's a big great crystal to the left in a friend's hands at the fresman museum and to the right you can see there's phenikite phenikite was also described from neuromines besides the christopher with alex and wright effect alexandrite named after cholera alexander we just come into this here's the emerald big emerald and here are beautiful emeralds the one to the left my wife is wearing came from the back side of the specimen now we come you see the emerald to the left and alexandria to the right alexandrite is dark green in a daylight changing to purplish red incandescent light here are emeralds that are abandoned beautiful banded by a valentina out to the left and here is director first my museum to the right with fake crystals in matrix very very well made and interesting i found this alex and dry tea i call it to the left when you put a bit of lemon in it it changes colors and has exactly the alexandrite colors some old labels of alexandrite so alexandrite is a very rare mineral and it was first found in the in the euros in as christopher and only 1833-34 it was found and discourse described with the color changing in some small crystals here is some of the history in this phenomenon named alexandria perovski was involved in that find gustavos made the first mineralogical description and he was given that peace and maximilian from duke of leuchttenberg is what owned this piece to the right and kochibus draws to the right is a best large alex and wright in russia probably in the world and koksharov he has specimens in the bridge museum now and the crystal dwarves with the color change by franz fanbert 1842 to the right or just lovely here's the detail so carl schwetzer is a very good german scientist gem expert and he published a book about russian alexandrites and i highly recommend that it's a thin book very well researched and there is everything correct in it i would say and here is the big druza here is a phenychite or chloride from the type locality and the mining company has some emeralds paint drawings from kids also really lovely to the right there the santa claus almost with uh in fact the santa claus clothes these clothes comes from the part in northern europe where it was tradition to wear these red and white clothes and here's from the our exhibit at the museum in luxembourg are you sleeping yet now i will go a little faster because we still have a few more miles to go quartz from uh maybe dolphin in france or from the euros there is one vein in the mercy field with such and from southern europe we have giant quartzes from polar euros almost as large this is 984 kilo the one to the left and another italian amethyst here is 4.2 ton quartz and it was mined for piezo course for military purpose technical purpose and here is one in moscow state university with beautiful inclusions they are tourmaline and serious site and here is citrine from molokovka polar urals that my wife cut designed the ring other euro quartzes oh that was a double one and of course they also find cyber right this is from uh extra lapis one page was missing there and here you can see the map we look again adore chaitanka and asbestos to the right so you see it's a north south trend along the granite context some beautiful beautiful ruby light the first was found in late 1700s and then in 1805 1810 they mined a lot of them and uh after 1820 wasn't that much but they found some new in the afc a bit further south in the kamehameha river they discovered in 1850 imperial topaz oranges to deep pinkish red purplish this is the first one known it's documented arrived to sweden 1850 and it was described 1853 by coke shadow here is pink topaz to the left and queen of sweden wearing pink topaz to the right it could be from brazil or euros this i do not know and here is the inman mountains we are not going to touch much upon it but also very famous in the south of euros this pegmatite had mside and probably told us there's a pocket just behind the people in the left photo and the amazonite crystal very nice found and there is one pagan type there are several different generations so when one study deposit one must really look careful there are several different types completely different generation of pegmatites in the same area and this is often the case and in my mount one of the most studied areas in the world they're still studying here are big sapphires in the pegmatite lovely pigment pigment 298 the young fellow to to the left found uh the best phagonate among many gemologists who were on the but it's a mark so he is really a mineralogist for the future here is a ruby so not only sapphire but the rubies this is from rice in polar euros now around mercinka there are also some of the corona which is red they're multi-colored sapphires and some red rubies we come to the famous malachite they were mining iron here and they came upon beautiful malachite so it means the place for working copper and the gomeshevsky is further to the south of the capital 80 kilometers south and they found it was it was worth 2000 bc already this many people don't know but there are many mines in fact they will work very early on and there's one cave in siberia that has a lot of very old tools um here's the cutting works this incredible malachite was found in 1774 it's in saint petersburg mining institute you can go and see it there today here is since it's in the hermitage to the left is malachite as you see it when you find it orphaning kirsten limestone and here is a cut one to the right and here is hermitage in saint petersburg and here is a book about malachite it was written by vladi ladislav and it was published in 100 000 books in soviet times and was given to all schools all universities all libraries so they had a very very serious education about geology and minerals and gemstones in soviet times who is publishing today 100 000 books and this very very good book it's in fact two books i should say um it was the malachite drone built in 1830s after they found this used 480 tonne boulder in mississippi and it was also used right from uh from lake baikal um on the pillars and there are also new malachite deposits this is from the side southwest in siberia i came out of school blast and here is this mine huge gold mine and you see the deposit beautiful asteroid malachite i've been lucky i visited here and dug myself ashrae malachi from the primary deposit rhodonite is also another non-transparent gem that was heavily used in in russia and this sarcophagus was done it was found in 1888 a huge boulder 48 tons and they transported it was very large job in those day transport a big boulder whoops no i don't know what happened sorry you see it okay something is happening what okay mayakovskaya metro station in in moscow is also from uh rhodonite on the columns to here it's beautiful beautiful see something is happening i have a little hiccup here can you still hear me you're still there okay you're looping yes so i will go quickly i will go here yeah i will see here we will go to de montoy it's also gemstone found in euros uh there is a well in fact there are two big quarries it was first found by nishni tagil by bob broadcast stream here is by bob rock and sheliabinsk some miners they dig in the forest here some of their files this is i think both from nation tagging and here but cut stones you see the variety of colors some beautiful inclusions of mia dixon italia international now here are very very chrome rich very strong but they're red from the same deposits here's beautiful inclusions for grappa arjuna serena jewels and here is beautiful horsetail inclusion of the mantroid which is famous and here is one by lukas vasari in 29 carat mounted from bobrovka there's another one okay i will show now the very first the last one we have seven minutes well eight minutes something if we should keep the time sapphire from lake baikal i don't shillong to the left channel of agola to the right here is a cross section so here we have an example of a granite intrusion which is with the crosses now what is on the surface is different to the left the mountains were eroded there we have pegmatized to the right we have grayson it means that it was going so the granite became portrayed was closer to the surface they have another another temperature another form of crystallization thin fissures full lobbero crystals are lined with topaz and smoky quartz here is sherlock agora material looks like this the fluoride to the right is spinello twin which is typical of grayson lower temperature and here's from adon chilon which is pegmatite here's a doncillon it's just an old map of a doncilon and it looks like this one of the most beautiful deposits i visited in my life looks like this from a very rare locality and then we have the last big localities turbulence from malhansk this is from extra lapis wonderful robo-light and multi-colored there is also many different colors colorless which turned out to be silicide ruby-like albite sometimes lady quartite also and in august as you see in 1995 i discovered together with russian friend and i had an american friend with me he wasn't that up at the quarry at that time but we found some small the turnout he analyzed it was russmanite i found in 1995 but in fact the species was described only three years later and it was you see here rosmanite from that pocket all dots were rosmanite so what is dravides down to the left from a completely other pragmatized which is this uh pegmatite this is an alpha to the right but also brown dry right there and here's morganite and here is beautiful albeit from what the australia troppas from aurora was another famous deposit south of narcinsk north of this area here is in the bridge museum or rulgatopas and of course we must mention the lasting diamonds of russia this is a huge diamond octane of 53.05 carrots in the museum from five minutes international some inclusions of purotite and there was no publication about diamonds they were very meticulous when they found them in the 1950s photographing looking at inclusions beautiful map so the diamond bus saying it's a huge region with here is one the mere pipe and with an inclusion that michael bogomolov made beautiful and here's a mere pipe from space and the dynasty it was cut from karat rough diamond which was named the romanov and its document as you see found that new urbinska kim black pipe and saga the largest is d color the best color of diamond 51.38 carrots and vivian's perfect cut and this al rosa diamond mining company now the last thing i'm mentioning is gold and platinum here is gold wire from leonard river very old piece and here are gold on the upper self and platinum below platinum often contains other like often rich in iron iridium osmium and so on and chromium and in siberia we also have platinum crystals extremely rare the one on top is the perhaps the oldest known crystal that only says katrinburg siberia but it could be that this is in fact from the condor intrusion in siberia and you see to the right here this beautiful rim it almost looks like a meteorite crater it's eroded in the center of this intrusion there are two more in siberia you can easily find this if you go to google earth and go near the east coast or hot sky more you find it very easily you can can see you can very easy to find and nephrite we must mention also now there are many more gems in russia and nephrite is one where you have many big deposits jada not so much there are plenty of aggies jasper and here's a fantastic cat sign that's right from jeffrey bergman 5.5 558 carat everything we speak about gems now nephrite you can mine thousands of tons but when you come to quality a stone like this is completely unique as i said the kids are out digging now in the winter and we cannot leave russia without mentioning some other master this is victor tustikov and we have several of his beautiful cut stones in the exhibit here at the museum now and the one to the right is a topaz he cut he's a real master and there are many of them who don't carvings and nikolai medvedev he moved to usa long time ago he does this incredible intarsia i would love to buy one of those one day when i get rich i would really love to and the last few pictures is more about the culture of russia we got two minutes to go to see the culture of course i cannot show you everything cultural russia this is a beautiful lunch in moscow and now we don't travel anything because of koi my wife said i'm longing to come to moscow and see the christmas decorations and have a nice lunch this is victor was the man who took me to this beautiful restaurant and no private house here is a gem show in moscow and of course there's wonderful theaters this bolshoi theater st petersburg my first visit with my wife i happen to marry a russian wife and you can understand why the quality comes from the inside but it's also on the outside there's many things in russia and i think it's sad that russia is very mis perhaps misunderstood and backspoken russia is a very very uh friendly nation really the people and they have extremely high education higher than the western europe since soviet times the geologists and medical doctors are those that i know best and mineralogists and they are absolutely highly educated i have a few pictures from my children and family and russia so thanks to my children they have i'm bringing them to all kinds of crazy geological sites acid sulfur legs and into mines and they always came with me and they liked it but it's not always this my son he was dreaming at night at our summers about complex garnets and the interesting thing there's only one place on that in that one area where exactly this morphology shape of garment occurs my parents always took me and then many friends of russia my i first i put in only guys here because most minerals are guys but most ladies at museum and most gemuldes are ladies and i have so many friends i could show plenty russian winter is not bad it's also beautiful and you can go i would suggest if you want to travel try it with the summer first the when the nights are long end of june july and then you can try it on winter for a weekend in saint petersburg moscow see the museums it's really beautiful oops here my son to the left in siberia you can see here healthy eating meat product pizza party they're very americanized city mall in the middle of south this in the middle of siberia this is a food store where they're also cooking and the the food is fantastic it's natural product to the right you see natural berries in in the yogurt frozen yogurt so i must say it's easy to gain there but at least it's healthy gaining and shashlik barbecue i barbecued in minus 42 degrees outside very nice for kids they have a lot of organized for their children i must say very high educational level already for three four-year-olds so thank you so much i'll be happy to see you again at some other conference thank you very much ladies and gentlemen i will stop sharing thank you peter for this passionate and impressive talk i've never seen in my my life so many minerals even not in our fantastic exhibition i think there are many minerals also in our russian minerals in our exhibition isn't it yes yes it's right yeah we put a lot of specimen from russia and it's it was very important for me when i decided to do this type of exhibit uh people very well know specimen from brazil and from africa but russia is so rich in menology and gemstones that i asked directly to peter to help me about that yeah there is perhaps an interesting question here from adulthood basilio yes um yes thank you peter for your wonderful presentation how many minds have you visited in your life and well there are any left you didn't visit oh they're a thousand thousand but essentially i will just tell you very briefly 1995 i brought two friends to finland to visit mine and on the way they asked me exactly this question so i started and they kept accounting and i started with the southernmost province of sweden i did every province and then norway and finland and i did each country and they counted to 1908 at that time and after i used to say many years i said thousand five hundred but i know it's way over three thousand i cannot say an exact number i would need to do it again and i would forget probably at least a hundred or two hundred you know but these are working or old minds inquiry specific ones and then of course i've seen thousands of veins so that's it and it's not the number that's important it is more how much you studied and how if you really look from morning to evening in scandinavia when i was young i could go out five in the morning and i know me and a friend one week and we checked out 19 different deposits one day because you go out five in the morning and you're there till 11 at night next day you continue five in the morning till midnight so because we have a midnight sun in much of sweden and we have light till 11 30 at night so to see 20 deposits in one day you have almost 20 hours and you think oh only one hour leaves space well if there's specific veins and quarries near each other you can do that and that's recognizing just to see which ones you want to study more then to the two three most important you come back many many times there's some veins that are listed way over a hundred times like the hex or pegmatite in my home quarry of course yeah and among all these pictures and specimens and minds you have mentioned now in your talk uh which yeah situation was perhaps the most challenging for you uh well when i came to russia the first two times first time i didn't know the language i came back six months later and i was very surprised myself i somehow had hand i didn't study i was a bad so i had too much studies at university i didn't study russian i should have done this half year but when i came back i could understand i could communicate so i had one american friend who asked me if he could come with me on a tour in russia so i took him my third trip to russia we traveled one month in siberia euros and then finished off in ukraine and moscow and he he was astonished he said how can you speak russian all everything i knew i learned in the minds it was all geology this i know and i read geological books but daily talk about to something else i was not very good at i must say and and then i said okay you try he said oh you have so easy and i said no no no you try now from the morning everything everyone says you repeat every word in your head and then up that one i recognize and suddenly you put two three words together and you start to understand so i learned the russian only by hearing in the minds in fact and i think the most challenging is it was to come there the first time not knowing the language and criminal times and i'm not going to detail this but you have to be very careful i arrived with my american friend in the middle of the night to the catchment airport and the person who was there to meet us was not there and they were only criminals lucky there was one lady with the sign of the german guy name he didn't come i spoke german to her and she said don't tell the guys who are driving don't tell that you're not this person those were criminals so some german coming to do some business there she took us and i showed her in the middle of the night i told my friend you jump out of the car and you just run this direction i go up and divert the tension i was not sold i had been in the armories i can divert their attention i will find you you just keep going along the road don't stop whatever you hear and he was scared to death i was scared of death but we got into town and i recognized the street and we found my friend and there was many scary points for him so but it's well i think he remembers this one of his most memorable trips ever we've been on six continents together studying pegmatites yeah um yeah it's a question here from ray hill um who loves the cuts the cat's eye charlie cabochon and he's asking where uh it is from uh i what i understood it was from siberia but i didn't have time to speak with jeffrey berman i just managed to get this beautiful photograph from him so i will tell you ray when i find out okay question from christopher clark who knows that you are knowledgeable regarding silver and and as you have mentioned gold and platinum of russia are there any significant mines producing specimen quality silver in russia yes there is one mine which is almost unknown it's in the very north east of siberia and now i'm just a little tired so i can't sleep in my butt but i can write to gig and this in the minus office there they have a picture and they don't even realize what this is i mean the the important there is a photo on the wall that they took of the pocket with wire silvers huge wire silvers inside the pocket there is no such photo anywhere from kongsberg norway and in this mine they didn't care so much i've seen two fantastic specimens of wire silver from this my own matrix one big and one smaller so there are wire silvers in russia yes and the road to gold is terrible you have to go 400 kilometers on on road that you will need to change tires yeah our personal question what about your next trips well we will see now i have a few more years well i have a few more years when until i retire and of course this call be put to stop i did not travel much the the last year but we will see i you know i also go around here at lax murder interesting deposit simone know it we've gone to the german cider here in luxembourg also belgium france not far away it's a far away place i go during my holidays and currently i don't have any planned holiday maybe next summer i will go somewhere of course i have a whole long list where i would like to to visit and many places i usually go alone because i cannot guarantee the safety for other people and also it gives me hundred percent attention to the geologist to the miners i meet i can listen and take in everything if i go with somebody else that that period of attention is reduced to 10 20 percent because another person want to know about something else i want to know everything about geology the minerality the history the culture i want to know so much and i can ask the questions and i can get so many questions through also so that may be linguistic but to to reach the results to learn about the deposit that's the best way for me okay you could perhaps talk about the last we do in 2020 in march oh yeah it was very yeah for a week for a week and i i brought someone had asked me for a long time so just for a weekend i took this is in fact sometimes i do i can go to scandinavia i work till 6 friday night i take a flight i arrive in the evening and i have saturday sunday in in the quarries of southern norway or sweden or wherever it is or ukraine as it was this case and i fly back sunday afternoon so i often go over the weekend and we went to volodars which is chamber pragmatized of ukraine very very famous and then of course later came corvid so this was but simon had asked me for a long long time and finally we made it and we will go another time because we will maybe coming summer it will be possible i i need my holiday with my family and then i take some part of the holiday for for geology mineralogy of course but often it's it's weekend trips and sometimes i can take a day off together with the weekend and sometimes it's easter holiday or christmas holiday so i need to use even christmas new year holiday for my geological trips and coming back to russia a question from priscilla grew where do you want to go from minerals when you are can when you can return to russia if when i can oh well i know there are many places in former soviet unions that would like to go uzbekistan tajikistan and in russia there are many many deposits you know for me it is i want to go to the koala peninsula i didn't go there for the reason that is very easy for me as a swede i was living in sweden i could jump in my car and drive up to cola so very easy so i always aimed my time is limited my money is limited because i don't i have another day job and i need to save the money and use my holiday money to go to see mines and hope my praying my wife will not be angry with me you know so so most i i have friends who are in or paid for geology and one friend today wrote me oh now i don't work for the same institute so they will not pay my participation in conference well nobody ever paid my participation and it's very harsh for a private person to go to a conference or go to a trip because if i need to i can buy 23 days off from work but it's very very expensive i lose income and it cost me so it cost me a fortune to go on a two-week trip if i need to take time off and call up an incident i would really like and that should be at least two week trip or a month trip and that's of course in summer otherwise you won't find anything unless you run the ground yeah are there some other questions to the audience no yeah so i think thank you again for this very very passionate um uh talk and to the audience even if you're not in luxembourg so i'm inviting you um two hours to try your best to come to luxembourg to visit our um exhibition on minerals and gems from dark to light with our curator perhaps simmer phd pool yeah if you cannot i have written the link foreign tour in the chat you can also find the same link on our internet page and it's worthy and yeah so for those who are living in luxembourg who have the chance we are myself we have the chance to um to be open so nearly all day except monday from uh 10 to uh from 10 a.m to 6 00 p.m so come to the museum it's better than ever every uh shopping center at this moment so and yeah to to visit the exhibition to see some wonderful gems and um and and minerals and uh every month there's a visit the garden tour with simmel so come to the museum and thank you again peter for your talk thank you very much yeah thank you again peter for your talk and also for your participation today's exhibit it's welcome thank you very much and here again perhaps for our next talk on minerals and this time it will be simmer himself it will be on the 12th of january um seymour will speaking about a field trip in brazil in brazil with together i think with professor kasdan and there will be some again some very fantastic photos from minerals and um yeah some science too so see you again and have a nice evening too yes bye-bye everybody merry christmas happy new year everybody thank you bye

Channel: Musée national d'histoire naturelle Luxembourg - 'natur musée'

Views: 1,882

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: B23TisfG3pU

Length: 75min 25sec (4525 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020