Pasadena Lapidary Society’s Tuesday, November 21, 2023 program meeting will feature member Paolo Sanchez, who will present on the Tourmaline King Mine in the Pala Mining District of San Diego County. New pockets have been uncovered with the first discovered in January 2022, the first major find at the mine in more than 100 years, and the first in Southern California since the “Big Kahuna” pocket at the Oceanview mine in 2010. This is exciting news and we are looking forward to hearing what Paolo has to share with us about one of our favorite areas in Southern California to go gem hunting.
Tourmaline found in San Diego County, cut and set into the pendant and earrings shown here. Photo courtesy of PLS member E. Weston.
November’s Rock of the Month talk will be about our Educational Program for schools and the community. Have you ever wondered how you can help? This month’s talk will illustrate how even the newest members can participate.
This program meeting takes place on Tuesday, November 21, 2023, at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.
Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. We hope to see you there!
The largest commercial deposits of amethyst in North America occur near the Canadian border in Southern Ontario. Unlike the more common Brazilian amethyst, this material is unique due to inclusions of red hematite in the outermost layers of the crystals. Our guest speaker for October, Dick Weber, first visited these deposits in the 1970s while studying for his graduate degree in Geology at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.
Geologists Dick and Mary Pat Weber have returned to these deposits several times over the years and on two recent visits were given special access to the workings of the deposit by the mine owners. As part of this presentation they will display some of this highly prized amethyst from their personal collections.
This program meeting takes place at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007, on Tuesday, October 17, 2023.
Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. Buy a raffle ticket for a few bucks and try your luck at winning a cool rock specimen, slab, or otherwise. We hope to see you there!
Pasadena Lapidary Society is excited to announce that Louis Hernandez of Abalone King will be our featured presenter for the September 19 program meeting. Louis has considerable knowledge of abalone, many years of experience in buying and selling, as well as creating gorgeous jewelry from abalone. Abalone are large gastropod mollusks that inhabit the cold waters along the California coast. While other abalone species can be found elsewhere in the world, there are seven abalone species in California: green, pink, black, white, red, pinto, and flat abalone. These highly sought-after mollusks have been ingrained in California culture for centuries.
This program meeting takes place at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007, on Tuesday, September 19, 2023.
Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. Buy a raffle ticket for a few bucks and try your luck at winning a cool rock specimen, slab, or otherwise. We hope to see you there!
Our Tuesday, August 15 program meeting will include a presentation by several junior members who were participants (and winners) in award competitions related to our rockhounding and lapidary hobbies. (We love how our young members inspire other kids to follow suit.)
This program meeting will also include a slide presentation related to our upcoming annual gem and mineral show, presented by PLS member Marcia Goetz.
Doors open at 6:30 pm in the Fellowship Hall at the Santa Anita Church located at 226 West Colorado Boulevard in Arcadia, CA 91007. Program starts at 7:00 pm. Free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. Come join us and see what we’re all about!
Pasadena Lapidary Society member Paolo Sanchez will be the featured speaker at the Tuesday, June 20th Program Meeting. Paolo is currently a graduate student at Caltech’s Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences.
The Roman Empire lasted for about 500 years, from its founding in 27 BC to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. Throughout this time, the famed ancient civilization incurred a vast amount of mineral wealth that included numerous mines of industrial and precious metals in Europe and the Mediterranean, some of which are still mined today. Additionally, the trade and status of gemstones — from Baltic amber to European agates — have had a profound impact on the lapidary world. This talk will combine history, geology and lore as the mineral world greatly impacted the Roman world as it does to our world today.
This program meeting takes place on Tuesday, June 20, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.
Take a step back into antiquity with us. Admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. Hope to see you there!
Tuesday, May 16, 2023 at 7:00 p.m., Fellowship Hall of the Santa Anita Church
This lovely agate jewelry image was provided by Tarun Adlakha.
This month, Tarun Adlakha (who is from India), will speak about pareidolia and the wonderful world of Indian Dendritic agates. Tarun is known to have the finest hoard of natural dendritic agate in the world with over 300,000 cabochons and specimens, some of which have been displayed at prestigious gem shows and museums around the globe and used by some leading designers. Tarun has accumulated a large number of stones with unusual patterns mimicking birds, animals, landscapes and mythical characters in a sort of fantasy wonderland in agate. His talk will focus on the history, mining, and cutting of these agates followed by a descriptive slide show of the unusual stones from his collection.
What do pearls and the desert have in common? Find out when PLS member Sue Pang provides the May Rock of the Month Talk, and explains how to identify cultured pearls from fake pearls, give some pointers on wearing a pearl necklace, and advise as to the best season to buy pearls. Before Sue Pang earned her engineering degree and worked in the Aerospace industry, she worked for one of the largest pearl companies in California.
This program meeting takes place on Tuesday, May 16, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.
Join us for what promises to be a very interesting evening! Admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. See you there!
Pasadena Lapidary Society member Paolo Sanchez will discuss the elusive Lapis Lazuli from Mount Baldy (aka ‘Old Baldy’ or Mount San Antonio) for our March program meeting. Paolo will cover the science behind lapis, its significance to lapidary, and his adventures in search of one of the only lapis mines in North America. He has been an active member of the Pasadena Lapidary Society since 2011, yet his passions for geology and rockhounding stem from kindergarten. He has written numerous award-winning articles on minerals and has been a guest speaker for various California Federation of Mineralogical Societies (CFMS) programs across California. He has received his bachelors in Geology and Geophysics from UC Berkeley and is now pursuing a PhD in geochemistry studying mineralogy and petrology at Caltech.
The March Rock of the Month presentation will be on Septarian Nodules and provided by PLS member Sue Dekany.
This program meeting takes place on Tuesday, March 21, 2023, at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.
Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. We hope to see you there!
Members of Pasadena Lapidary Society, along with most serious rockhounds, wait anxiously all year to make the 3-1/2 hour trek to Quartzsite, AZ in January. Some stay there into February, camping nearby in order to go rockhounding at their leisure, and others check in to the few motels in town or travel the 22 miles back/forth to Blythe, CA for lodging.
Some sizable chunks of beautiful Lapis Lazuli, at vendor booth of a past year’s QIA PowWow in Quartzsite.
One of the biggest draws in Quartzsite is the QIA POWWOW, always held the third week in January. This year the POWWOW runs from January 18-22. If you’ve never been, the POWWOW is like a huge swap meet focused on gems, minerals, rocks and everything related. Admission is free and so is parking.
Self-professed as “The Rock Capital of the World”, Quartzsite is a town in La Paz County of +/- 2,000 inhabitants that swells to a couple of million in January and February each year. Situated 125 miles west of Phoenix at the junction of Interstate 10 and U.S. Highway 95, it enjoys a close association with the Colorado River, just 18 miles to the west.
The January 17th, 2023 Pasadena Lapidary Society Program Meeting will feature Dick Weber, who will introduce us to the colorful world of Fluorite. Due to a spectacular range of colors and well-developed crystals, this mineral is highly sought after by collectors. Clear and colorless when pure, fluorite can exhibit every color of the spectrum from the deepest purple to bright oranges and reds. In addition to its aesthetic and scientific value, fluorite is a critical industrial mineral used in the production of thousands of commercial products.
Dick Weber was first introduced to the fluorite deposits of the Mississippi Valley while working on his geology degree. Actively collecting specimens for the last 15 years, he will bring a display showcasing pieces from famous locales.
PLS member Curtis Schurer will present the second part of his Rock of the Month Talk on Jasper.
This program meeting takes place at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.
Join us for an illuminating evening as we begin our 2023 Program Meetings! Admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. See you there!
For our November Program Meeting, we’re delighted that Renée Newman will be our speaker, providing images and information in her presentation on Diamonds that includes, among other things, the most significant discoveries of rough diamond crystals, five basic diamond crystal types and their relative value from highest priced to lowest priced, where to find diamonds in the U.S., and what American diamonds look like in the rough in order to help you spot them while prospecting and rockhounding.
Renée has a book out entitled Diamonds: Their History, Sources, Qualities and Benefits and much of her presentation is reflected in her book.
Renée Newman developed her interest in gems while conducting tours to Asia, South America and the South Pacific. Her passengers wanted information about the gems that were displayed in hotels and stores so she signed up for a colored stone grading course at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) in order to be able to answer their questions. The teachers there inspired her to complete the GIA colored stones and diamonds program.
After receiving a graduate gemologist diploma from the GIA, Renee was hired as a gemologist at a diamond wholesale firm in downtown Los Angeles. It provided hands-on experience grading diamonds and selecting colored gems and pearls for their jewelry. Armed with trade experience and gemological credentials, Renée decided to create books that showed readers how to visually evaluate the quality of gems. Her first book, the Diamond Ring Buying Guide, was published in 1989. Since that time, she has written thirteen more books on gems and jewelry, including the Diamond Handbook geared to trade professionals and her new large-format book Diamonds: Their History, Sources, Qualities and Benefits. Information about it is available at http://www.reneenewman.com/diamonds.htm
Renée’s books are used as consumer guides, gemology course textbooks, sales training tools and appraisal references and are listed at www.reneenewman.com/books.htm. Renée will be selling her books at a discount and autographing them before and after her presentation. Bring cash or a check if you would like to purchase copies of them.
PLS member Curtis Schurer will discuss Jasper for the Rock of the Month presentation. Jasper is an opaque, impure variety of silica, comes in several colors, and is often found in the Mojave Desert.
This program meeting takes place at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.
Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. See you there!
