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Desert Storm

By David Federman, Editor-in-Chief

At Tucson 2009, Colored Stone will launch its first-ever jewelry exhibition devoted to showcasing the finest picture jasper ever discovered. You don't want to miss this collection of loose and set Sahara Desert splendors from North Africa.

Royal Sahara Jasper: cut stones by Greg Genovese, jewelry by designer Vince Gulino.

The Sahara Desert has always been good to Janet and George Sechler, a mineral dealer duo based in Seattle, Washington. Once she led them to an undisturbed grove of petrified wood with trunks up to 40-feet long and one agatized specimen weighing 600 pounds. Later she rewarded them with Gypsum (Selenite) crystals the size of serving plates.

In April 2006, the Sahara gave them the first sign of her greatest blessing to them ever: a nodule of picture jasper unlike any the two had ever seen. Was there more? George wanted to know. Or was this merely a one-of-a-kind mineralogical happenstance?

A month later the Sechlers found the answer. That nodule was one of thousands scattered across an ancient river bed anywhere from 5 to 15 feet below the sand. Starting in July, the couple dug by hand in temperatures up to 140F--working for an hour then resting for a half an hour. Within months, the pair had accumulated several tons of rocks. By the end of the year, in December, the Sechlers shipped the first tonnage of what they now called “Royal Sahara Jasper” to America then started selling it at their web site of the same name early in 2007. In March of 2007, they returned to their Sahara site, this time with a small crew of Sudanese workers to make recovery easier and quicker. By the start of Tucson 2008, the couple had shipped a total of 28 tons of the material to America.

When we reached the Sechlers in January 2008, they agreed to send some sample nodules to Colored Stone to show cutters and dealers at the show. We wanted to see if unbiased experts would find the jasper as fabulous as the couple claimed. Little did we know that we would set in motion a rapturous chain reaction regarding this new-find material.

A Coming-Out Party

Royal Sahara Jasper: cut stones by Greg Genovese, jewelry by designer Vince Gulino.

A few weeks later, after he had cut his first stones, Genovese's opinions were outright ecstatic. “Royal Sahara material is denser and tougher than any comparable material; it takes a better polish; it boasts unprecedented pattern variety and color range, and it usually gives incredible yields of 80%, sometimes 90%,” he said. “I doubt there will be another find of picture jasper that is this spectacular.”

Hearing such praise for Royal Sahara jasper, Colored Stone decided to do more than publicize it in its pages; it decided to sponsor a coming-out event for this material at the place best suited for such a debut: the 2009 Tucson Show.

Here's what we have planned.

We will stage the first of what we intend to be annual jewelry design invitationals featuring either specific gems or built around larger themes. Our inaugural show, which will run for the entirety of the Tucson Show, will feature Royal Sahara jasper and responses to it by well-known designers like Paula Crevoshay, Tom Dailing, Patrick Murphy and Lee Dorsey. Full information concerning participants and dates will be given in upcoming issues of our twice-monthly Gem-Mail e-letter. Stay tuned for further details and mark this event as one of your destinations while in Tucson.

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