Wednesday, November 3, 2011

I went into the city earlier than I usually do for two meetings and to do a little shopping. First stop, Broadway and 23rd Street at Madison Square.  The new in-the-street-park has a lot of planters, in this planter I saw what I thought was a tree with unusual leaves.  It had what appeared to be a woody trunk and extraordinary purple palmate leaves, turns out it is a Castor Bean plant, trimmed so that it bushed out instead of taking on its usual taller shape.

Second stop was on 47th Street where I was shopping for silver and burnishing compound.  On the way there from the Broadway line, I saw these policemen with their horses. Don’t think I’ve ever seen this many together at once.

The third horse was standing with its hind foot like this. It didn’t move at all the whole time I was there, hoof tip to pavement.

I saw this bracelet in one of the windows on 47th Street and admired the layout of this filigree design.

Third stop, Canal Street, to Kam Man (Golden Gate) to buy tea. Fall vegetables are in all the sidewalk stands. This was an enormous squash.

Lychee and cactus fruit with chestnuts and  blue grapes.

Okra, asparagus and avocados, a totally green selection.

One of the seafood stores closer to Broadway as I make my way West on Canal.

These guys were alive and rustling in the basket.

Some Canadian tourists deciding on lunch.

Closer to Broadway, I looked south on Center Street toward City Hall.

A telephoto of the City Hall tower and a newer tower with undulating sides.

I remember when this red building was being built, it has had a number of tenants over the years and was starting to look worn, now seems to be under renovation.

Behind the red building, old graffiti and a cluster of water tanks.

Walking West on Walker Street I saw this collection of plants being discarded.  Someone’s roof garden had roses and cotton plants in it for the summer.

Lower Sixth avenue looking northwest.

Some Tribeca cafes.

Looking east to the AT&T Building. Its crown of antennas was built after 9-11 when we lost the aerials on the WTC.

An old building that is marked where it was built. Near my last stop before heading home.

Thursday night, November 4, 2011

After class at FIT, I met Colman, we had dinner and went to an opening in Chelsea. No photos there, it was a art book fair, too many people and exhibits.  We met a friend and a neighbor in the ferry terminal on the way home and had a pleasant ride back to Staten Island.  Here are some  shots in the dark, first as we walked back out of Chelsea to the 1 train on 23rd Street.  A very clear and cool night. The Met Life tower was lit like a beacon to Fifth Avenue.

The Empire State Building, unusually all in white lights.

From the boat as we rode into the harbor.

I’ll open this entry with a shot of my display for Art by the Ferry  which took place the first two weekends of  June. The photo was taken by  our friend Sarah Yuster. It turned out to be a successful show. It was on the tail of that energy that I made the following new pieces for the upcoming show this weekend at the Conference House on the southern tip of Staten Island.  It is to be the first Raritan Bay Arts Festival.  Wish us luck and temperate weather.

I have just finished this long silver chain with faceted, polished aquamarine nuggets and hammered silver rings. I loved these stones the minute I saw them, I have others that will be wired together in the byzantine style as the summer progresses. 

Here’s a close up. The hammered silver rings flash and sparkle when the chain moves.

I finished this chain of triplets at the beginning of the week: a choker made of  polished aquamarine stones in a freeform cube shape with large round freshwater pearls, there are matching earrings.  The hook works in all of the large rings and the piece could probably be worn doubled as a bracelet.

This is a collection of earrings and a few pendants in stone and glass that I put together for summer and evening wear.

I also worked on the Lion Cup this week, It will take a little longer  than I expected getting it finished and ready for wine. There’s a lot of polishing to be done on the inside and on the lip. Here’s a photo of the cup as it came from the electro form mold.  We have ordered another one.

The Art By The Ferry Show will be coming up the first two weekends in June. I have been making a number of new pieces of jewelry for the event. Now that the Friends of Fire Store is open I have pieces there as well as the Red Carpet Gallery on Castleton, both of the establishments are on Staten Island.

The first pieces are Part of the fluorite collection I have been making for summer wear.  The fluorite beads are always cool to the touch and come in colors ranging from clear to greens and purples. A few of the beads will have several colors in them in bands or stripes.

This is an eggplant or deep amethyst colored  necklace. I chose the beads to make an elegant monochromatic statement. All the wires and findings are sterling silver, I make the hooks myself.

The next piece is more typically colored Fluorite showing a good range of the colors.

In person, these are all shades of green, the camera and lighting don’t do them justice. I added flashing hammered silver rings to make the piece sparkle as well as glow.

This last piece is made with Dragon Skin Agate. I like the reticulated character of the markings in the stone. The earth tones will compliment  almost every colored outfit, I like to make things that can be worn daily in stead of being saved for a night out or special occasion.  This is being old as a set too.

The  2010 New York Gem and Mineral Show was held last weekend at the Holiday Inn on 57th  Street. It’s usually one large room with a varied collection of vendors selling everything from mineral specimens, many are museum quality, to flawless faceted stones ready for use in jewelry.

This is a typical display of  moderately priced specimens.

And this is beginning to look like major display specimens for collectors and museums. 

The jewelry club is planning a digging trip to Herkimer,  New York, before this I had only seen herkimer ‘diamonds’ (exceptionally clear quartz) up to about 10 mm.  These pieces are huge, the herkimer crystals are unusual because they are doubly terminated and usually short in comparison to quartz found in other places. The crystal in the center of this picture  was marked at $300, something that made me take notice.  It is apparently rare to find crystals of this size. The crystals are  formed very slowly in pockets left by decaying bacteria/algae(?) clumps from a pre-dinosaur age.  When a pocket is opened,  it is found to be filled with a clayey soup that may contain hundreds of crystals,  hopefully large ones, that you have to strain or search through to find the ‘diamonds’.

This was new this year, loaves of jasper from China. There were also a number of specimens from Pakistan and Afghanistan which I thought was surprising given the current political /war situation.

Here are some more of the large specimens followed by a photo of minerals whose colors I like.

Aquamarines have been a recent passion. Here are some large aquamarine crystals in a bed of another mineral.

The translucent pink stone is also a beryl,  Morganite.  There are yellows  and greens too, the best greens are Emeralds.

This is a Brazilian Ballas Diamond crystal.  I’d like to be able to wear it. This one comes from John Betts, a dealer in smaller specimens of the highest quality.  His web site is a little difficult to navigate if you are just looking but it has beautiful photos of his specimens, separated by class and price  if you know what you want.

here’s a John Betts specimen of Aquamarine.

The next specimens are from  Raj Minerals, Inc. I find his displays breathtaking, he always has large pieces of the most unusual minerals.  The website is not as full as I would like to see and my photos are better but he does list the shows where he will be selling and it is really worth the trip to see these  minerals. The tags in the photos are the prices,

This is a detail of the stone in the photo below it.

As i was leaving I spied these thick slabs lying on a table near the exit.  nice bright color combinations.

I think Ocean Jasper is my favorite jasper, this piece is about an inch thick and about 7″ across.

As we left the Holiday Inn the weather was very clear.  The Time Warner towers loomed over the skyline like huge crystals of dark aquamarine.

I’m at the Tucson airport with a lot of time before our flight to Houston, we change there and will arrive Newark about 1:30AM. The airport wireless is free here unlike Newark and Phoenix, so I’m taking time to edit photos and add to the blog.We met George at the Convention Center to see the big displays of minerals, after we got to the floors it looked like there was mostly jewelery displays and jewelers suppliers of cut stones. A little further inside the mineral displays began to appear.There were some grand displays like this one of amazonite from various mines. 

Large impressive specimens in abundance.

I thought I would try to find examples of minerals in a classic crystal formation. Here are some of them. 

This is Anglesite with Malachite.

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This is a nice presentation of small quartz crystals on florite.

I found some emerald dealers from Bogota. They had some nice stones and I asked if they had any trappiche Emeralds. They did and showed me these cabochons. The light colored stones were about $98/carat, the darker ones in the next photo were about $108/carat. I didn’t buy any, fascinating as they are, they aren’t the color or size of the specimens I saw in a book on gems at the Smithsonian. It might make a nice ring but I didn’t fall in love with any of them (the stones were between 1.5 and about 3 carats each.

Then they handed me a piece of trappich emerald in the matrix, it’s obviously not a gem stone but the form is very nice.

We left the convention center and went back to the Inn Suites show as we hadn’t  seen it all on our first visit and the displays were as good  but less pricy than the vendors at the center. Here’s George standing among the larges lingam stones I have ever seen, some of these were over 6 feet long.

When we broke for a mid-afternoon bite to eat, Colman and I went back to the bar. There was a cashier, and then there was a waitress, while we were being waited on the cashier was still behind the bar, we thought they were one person doing both jobs until we saw two of them at the same time. I asked to take their picture for Colman’s neices to see.

We arrived in Tucson about mid day on Tuesday, Colman picked up our rental car and we drove out to Mary Jane and David’s home just out side the city limits in the shadow of the Catalina mountains. It is good to be back, the air is clean and bright with sunlight. After settling in, we took a walk around the neighborhood, here are two of Colman’s photos.

Wednesday we met with George, who had already been in Tucson since Monday, to go to the Mineral Show which takes over the city for the first two weeks of February. Our first stop was at the Inn Suites, where all the rooms were turned into little showrooms for fossils, minerals and gems. There was a big show in the ballroom and little shows were in every nook and cranny of the lobby. As we tripped into the building we passed a brown tent with this trilobite welcome mat guarded by 2 large quartz crystals.

Here’s Colman and George in the first room we visited.

Spessartine and Smoky Quartz

Microcline v. Amazonite Smoky Quartz

An unusual specimen of Calcite and quartz.

Pyrite on Quartz

Green Apophyllite

This is one of many large fossils on display. 

One end of the ballroom was dedicated to the fossil sellers. There are vendors there who are selling casts of fossils as well as the real fossil bones. The large turtle is impressive, the full spectrum ammonite fossils from Canada are there along with a sea full of crinoid fossils.

I heard guys talking about this piece of ancient sea bed, saying it took about 100 hours to clean it up to show the fossils. I’m thinking, only a hundred hours?

I found these beautiful fossils in a room showing a collection of work from Germany. It took me completely by surprise, I am used to seeing thes type of fossils as flat cockroachy things and had no idea that the living animals had antennae, tendrils(?) and tails.

Outside, in front one of the tents, these Indian river stones were laying down. There were hundreds of them in all sizes from about 2 inches to 50 inches. We saw even larger ones the next stop in Electric Park, up to 78 inches, also a part of a display of hundreds.

As we left the Inn Suites I stopped into the Brown tent at the entrance where I bought some ammonite pairs and a sand dollar that had finger-like protuberances aling one edge. This croc like fossil was centrally placed in the tent.

The first thing we saw at the Electric Park show was this split geode of Citrines

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Here’s a shot of the passage into the park, it’s amazing to see and walk through these large specimens. This is only one side of the passage into the park, the other side was just as full of crated specimens.

This is how the show is set up in Electric Park, There was also a section of vendors in RV’s in an adfjacent parking lot.