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By Megan Zborowski • Editorial Assistant Colored Stone and Lapidary Journal proudly present the winners of the 2nd Annual Gemmys competition. This year’s competition showed us that gem artists never fail to push the boundaries of lapidary art. To all the entrants and winners: Take a bow, you deserve it.

Gem artists submitted their stunning creations in five categories this year: Faceted Gems, Cabochon Gems, Specially Cut Gems, Gem Objects, and Man-Made Gem Materials.

The judges for this year’s competition were: Eric Braunwart, founder of Columbia Gem House and president of the American Gem Trade Association (AGTA); innovative gem cutter Richard Homer, owner of Gems By Design, Inc. and previous Gemmy winner; and renowned gemstone photographer Jeff Scovil.

Best of Competition

Dalan Hargrave, Super Nova

Photo: John Parrish.

Dalan Hargrave began working with jewelry in the early 1970s as a student at San Antonio Junior College. After taking only two lapidary-related classes, he became a jewelry repairman, gaining experience through years of work.

“I’ve learned a lot from books, magazines, and catalogues along the way. . . . I love working with tools and have a natural, driving curiosity to try new techniques.”

But Hargrave’s interest in gem art really started to peak when he attended his first Tucson show in 1998. “A number of gem artists were very inspirational in the beginning, including Larry Woods, Arthur Anderson, Larry Wynn, Henry Hunt, and others. That year I attempted my first carving,” he says.

Hargrave went on to win a number of Cutting Edge and Spectrum Awards. In 2004, he was inducted into the National Rockhound and Lapidary Hall of Fame for his metalcraft. He also operates Gemstarz, a studio for crafting jewelry and objects of art, located in Bulverde, Texas. He says one of his main goals is to try and “come up with new gemstone designs in an effort to be truly original.”

The lucky discovery of two diggers, Mary and Jerry Wickstrom, led to Hargrave’s creation of his winning piece, Super Nova.

The Wickstroms discovered the Oregon sunstone as they were fee-digging at the Dust Devil Mine in Cloverdale, Oregon. Don Buford, a co-owner of the mine, recognized the beauty and potential of the stone, and sent the sunstone to Hargrave to design a cut for it.

Hargrave draws his inspiration for gem cutting from a variety of sources, including rhythmic geometric shapes and patterns; random, yet graceful lines; and nature.

“In transparent gems, I usually try to design a variety of optical components, utilizing reflection and image-altering techniques to create intrigue and enhance color saturation,” he adds.

This inspiration can be seen in Super Nova, a 62.5-ct. Oregon sunstone. Hargrave used the natural, flat surface of the stone, which was slightly domed and polished, “as a window [to] draw a person’s interest within the stone. Slight imperfections were cut out by cutting reducing lenses that gather the image from a larger surface beneath.”

Hargrave used his signature spirographic cut to create the design. Spirographic cutting, he says, consists of cutting a series of indexed “v” grooves using a custom-built machine with index capabilities, which allows for an infinite number of patterns. “After polishing the grooves, the end result is between 43 to 45 degrees, which works well with most gemstones’ refractive index,” he adds.

Spirographic cutting is not a new technique — it’s often used in the cutting of crystalware — but it’s a relatively new technique in the gemstone world. “It’s a good cut for flat, tabular material that would otherwise window in conventional faceting. It [also] minimizes waste,” Hargrave explains.

He applied this technique to the deepest portion of the stone in order to save weight. He then cut a series of graduated spheres, creating a small section in each sphere that has the proper angle to reflect light. “The reducing lens above them actually gathers the image from an area twice the size,” he says.

Hargrave finished the carving by cleaning the parameter of the stone with concave undulating surfaces that “reflect across the bottom and also have the effect of increasing color saturation.”

First Place, Faceted Gems

Stephen M. Avery, Nancy Suite

Photo: Robert Weldon.

Flipping through a newspaper one day as a teenager, Stephen Avery came across an article that ultimately changed his life. The article featured a diamond-cutting school in a community near his hometown of Carson City, Nevada. It made him think about his prospects for the future, and ultimately he decided to explore diamond cutting as a career.

So in 1973, Avery enrolled in the American School of Diamond Cutting, beginning a two-year apprenticeship. He graduated as the youngest journeyman in the school’s history.

Avery’s diamond-cutting knowledge led him to a job opportunity in Colorado, where he worked for a lapidary. As the company began to expand into colored gemstones, Avery found himself thinking that color “could be a lot more fun . . . the vibrant colors, as well as the endless possibilities of form, were alluring.”

He soon became a polisher, which allowed him to learn the patterns, shapes, and facets of a variety of colored gemstones. Avery learned quickly, and in six months, he replaced the owner as the primary cutter in the shop. In 1980, he opened his own business in Denver, Colorado.

Avery has won numerous Cutting Edge and Spectrum awards over the years. He is known in the industry for his unique, intricate cuts, such as the trillion cut, which he says is a rather complicated cut that he developed over several years. He has also been working on his color-combination pieces for more than 15 years, as can be seen in his winning piece, Nancy Suite.

Nancy Suite is one of Avery’s multiple-stone creations, made of blue-green tourmaline and rubellite tourmaline, both of Nigerian origin. He “toned down” his faceting techniques for this piece in order to emphasize the color and tonality of the stones, which are extremely critical to overall effect, he says. The cut itself does not use “a lot of bells and whistles. It’s all about the design, colors, and tonality, and how they relate to one another.”

But Avery had some difficulty with this 4.97-ct. piece. One of his biggest challenges was to “get the pieces to work together. . . . The grouping fought me tooth and nail. At some points, I wanted to quit.” But the fight was worth it, he adds, as his whole vision came together in the form of a beautiful piece.

Second Place, Faceted Gems

Marvin Lansden, Untitled

Photo: Robert Weldon.

The transition from collector to dealer was an obvious one for Marvin Lansden. He began to buy and sell colored gemstones in 1984 after he co-founded Dar Mar Enterprises in Austin, Texas. A combination of necessity and curiosity led Lansden to begin faceting colored gemstones. Lansden now offers an array of services to his clients, including: faceting, carving, re-cutting, casting, and repairs.

Lansden recently purchased a parcel of Pakistani peridot rough at one of the Tucson shows, and soon discovered an odd-shaped piece of rough in the parcel that he felt had great potential. It was to become his winning piece, a 7.08-ct., faceted peridot. Although he didn’t have a particular design in mind, one thing was certain: He knew the rough had to be kept “as is.”

“I realized the best usage of this piece would be to keep it intact rather than cutting it into smaller pieces,” Lansden says.

But the odd shape of the material presented a bit of an obstacle. He often facets stones that will ultimately be used in a piece of jewelry, and this peridot was no exception. As he worked on the stone, Lansden kept in mind whether it could be set easily in jewelry. He found that the stone was “fairly deep in relation to its width. . . . It’s rather long and narrow,” he explains.

Lansden has a jewelry design in mind for the stone — possibly a pendant — but due to its shape and depth, he admits that it might be a hard sell. “[The stone] is clumsy to mount without making the piece rather huge.”

Lansden says the techniques he used to facet the stone were “nothing exotic:” He primarily used standard lapidary equipment and GEM-CAD, a 3-D faceting program.

But for Lansden, it’s not about trying to manipulate the stone to achieve specific goals. “You have to do what the material wants you to do.”

First Place, Specially Cut Gems

Tom Munsteiner, Zip Zip

Photo: Lichtblick/Cullman.

Tom Munsteiner hoped to bring to light the stark differences between polished and unpolished facets in his winning piece, Zip Zip, a 32.03-ct. yellow citrine.

“The ‘zip-zip’ design . . . shows the contrast of polished and unpolished facets . . . The polished facets are the middle point [of the piece] and the unpolished facets are the background,” he says.

Just like the design Munsteiner created for Magic Eye, the zip-zip design has its origins in the past. Although this cut is rather new, “all of my designs have had a beginning in the past. So every new design belongs to the experiences over a long [period of] time,” he adds.

One of Munsteiner’s customers indirectly gave the design its unique name. “I had some samples of this new cut with me in the United States, but I did not have a name for this cut. One customer liked them very much and asked ‘What kind of zip-zip cut is this, and what’s the name of the cut?’ And I answered, ‘It’s the zip-zip cut.’”

Second Place, Specially Cut Gems

Tom Munsteiner, Ritmo

Photo: Lichtblick/Cullman.

Tom Munsteiner knew all along he would become a gemstone cutter. Munsteiner was born in Bernkastel-Kues, Germany, in 1969, and by 1989 was educated as a lapidary stonecutter in the company of his father, Bernd Munsteiner. He then moved on to become a gemologist in 1991, and studied gemstone and jewelry design in Idar-Oberstein from 1993 to 1995.

Munsteiner has wone numerous Spectrum, Cutting Edge, and German Jewelry and Precious Stone Design awards.

The name of Munsteiner’s winning piece, Ritmo, reflects the inspiration for the design he used to cut the 29.27-ct. green tourmaline. After a trip to Brazil for gemstone rough, he created this cut in 2000, calling it “ritmo,” Portuguese for rhythm. Ritmo is a technique that Munsteiner associates with a regular, periodical, and orderly cut.

“The rhythm design is a left and right cut in a rhythm along the back side of the stone,” he says.

First Place, Cabochon Gems

Tom Munsteiner, Magic Eye

After toying with the idea of transforming the “normal” cabochon cut over several years, German-based gem artist and designer Tom Munsteiner hopes to establish a new design for cabochons with his winning piece, Magic Eye.

“I [began working] with this design in the ‘90s, and first found out that when I played with the proportions of the front and the back sides of the cabochon, I got new effects,” says Munsteiner.

Munsteiner used what he calls the “loupe effect” in order to create the 50.55-ct. red tourmaline piece. This effect, he says, is a visual illusion — when a finger is placed behind the “bubble” of the stone, it will appear to be very small. “When I changed the proportions of the cabochon, front and back, the finger behind [it looks] bigger or smaller,” he adds.

The process used in the creation of the finished piece developed over several years, as Munsteiner incorporated many ideas and elements of design. “It [was] a free-thinking [process] . . . . It’s hard to explain because it started with one idea and [over time included] many other ideas. It was a growing idea,” he says.

Rather than working with a specific game plan or goal, Munsteiner says that it’s important to go with the flow. As many gem artists will attest, he says, “sometimes you work with your heart.”

LEFT: Magic Eye by Tom Munsteiner. Photo: Lichtblick/ Cullman. RIGHT: Bird of Paradise by Rick Stinson. Photo: Rick Stinson.

Second Place, Cabochon Gems

Rick Stinson, Bird of Paradise

Rick Stinson’s fascination with gems and minerals began as a young child, when he was shown some of the rocks, minerals, and fossils on his grandfather’s ranch in Oklahoma.

Stinson learned how to cut cabochons when serving in the U.S. Army, while he was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. The rest of his lapidary skills have been self-taught, he says.

Stinson went on to open his first business in 1972, cutting custom cabochons and doing silver inlay, as he continued to learn cutting techniques for a variety of gemstones. In 1983, he started faceting, and also learning lost wax casting and goldsmithing. By 1995, he began gem carving. He became an artist member of the Gem Artists of North America in 2003, and was also a winner in last year’s Gemmys competition.

Stinson is sought after by many designers, jewelers, and collectors throughout the United States and in several other countries as well. He continues to do custom and concave faceting, sculpture, internal carving, inlay, and custom cabochons.

Stinson did not originally intend on creating his winning piece, Bird of Paradise, when he purchased the Condor agate several years ago. He kept it on the shelf of his lapidary in order to fully enjoy the unique patterns and color of the stone. Stinson was especially intrigued with “one particular area in this agate [that] had a bit of gold and orange coming into the fortification pattern on one end.”

But as time went on, Stinson debated on whether to cut the stone. He finally decided to try and capture the pattern in a single cabochon. But as he began to work, he soon realized that he needed to make a thicker cut than he wanted to in order to clear the clamp in his saw. “After making the saw cut, I was very disappointed to see the pattern nearly disappear in the new slice, as it had swirled and changed through the stone.”

But he discovered that the back of the thick slice of the agate was still very intriguing, and that the pattern continued back into the original surface. Stinson felt it was still too thick for a cabochon, so he used a trim saw and, very carefully, sliced it hand. “When the two slices finally parted, I could hardly believe the incredible colors,” he adds.

The pattern that he hoped to accentuate was further developed by the grinding and sanding process. “When I finished polishing, at last, the magnificent feathery display of a Bird of Paradise was the resulting pattern.”

Stinson gave the 24.95-ct. agate its name because “this abstract bird shape with its magnificent colored feathers suggested the dynamic and incredible display of a Bird of Paradise.”

First Place, Man-Made Gem Materials

Rick Stinson, Crown of Fire

Photo: Robert Weldon.

Although Rick Stinson has a place in his heart for all gems and minerals, he says he’s had a particular interest in red beryl for a number of years, mainly due to the stone’s intense color and rarity.

As a gem and mineral collector, Stinson jumped at the chance to go to the Utah desert in 2002 to try and collect red beryl for himself. Hoping to find red beryl suitable for cutting, he embarked on his journey, only to find that the “typical bixbite crystals were generally too small to cut and more special to me as mineral specimens.”

Stinson soon realized that “availability of suitable mined rough, of any decent size, even at astronomical prices, was not going to happen.” So he switched his focus to lab-grown red beryl, with the hopes of finding a high-quality stone of good color.

After searching for samples over several months, “I finally found rough crystals with exactly the right color [that] were thick enough to cut decent stones,” he says.

Armed with the stone that satisfied his needs, Stinson decided to try a concave cut using some of the indexes from a cut used in his winning piece from last year’s competition, Eye of the Dragon, a design he created without the use of any CAD-CAM software.

“What resulted [was] a transformation of an octagon shape into a marquise shape. . . . The concave light return pattern is very interesting, as expected with the concave technique,” he says.

He named the finished 4.75-ct. red beryl Crown of Fire, due to the “unusual table shape [that] suggested a crown and the magnificent red patterns of light radiating throughout the stone.”

First Place (Tie), Gem Objects

Howard Friedler, The Aquatic Tower

Photo: Howard Friedler.

Howard Friedler, the current president of Gem Artists of North America, has spent much of the past 25 years doing what he loves: carving gemstones. His passion, Friedler says, lies with figurative art. “I have loved figurative carving since I was a small child. I carved in many materials before stone captured me.”

He went on to develop his own techniques of 3-D internal sculpture, primarily using quartz, topaz, and aquamarine. “Melding the hollowed internal image to the external shape allows me to create visual movements and interaction of figures.” These elements can be seen in his “Hollowgraphic” art form.

Hollowgraphics is a process that Friedler has developed over the years that allows for deep, internal sculpting. “This form of carving changes the way light passes through the stone and often evokes banding, color zoning, and rutile needles that appear during the carving process. . . . I find this art form exhilarating, as no two pieces are ever the same,” he explains.

Friedler has designed and built special tools when his creativity was limited by commercially-available tools. Friedler’s main choice of material has become quartz because it is “available in larger sizes than most other gemstones, and can often be purchased in many different polished shapes. [I use that] to create movement of the finished sculpture by carefully placing it within the curves and planes of the outside surfaces,” he says.

Friedler spent more than a year creating his winning piece, The Aquatic Tower. The piece was commissioned by his chiropractor, Joan Schultze, who asked him to create a sculpture with several specific sea animals. This 2,352- ct. Brazilian quartz is made of 17 freeform, fitted optical quartz cabochons.

He decided to stack a series of rings made of quartz, in decreasing size, to make the hollow tower. “I made clay models of each stone section to determine the required shapes, matching them to the stones.”

But the process took its toll, as Friedler rounded each section of the piece by hand. He had to take a break for weeks at a time to allow his fingers and nails to heal in order to continue the shaping process, he says. “Cutting each ring’s joining edges was very difficult, as I tried to keep the ocean bottom flowing and the ring rounded,” he says.

Each ring also had to be tapered toward the top, he adds, and each section of the stone needed to be angled inward.

“I had to cut locking overhangs into the bottoms of each higher level so the rings would sit atop each other for structural strength, and to vary the planes of the surfaces that would eventually be reverse intaglio-carved.”

Photo: Lichtblick/ Cullman.

After carving all the rings, Friedler epoxied them together and topped the sculpture with a capstone on the fourth level. The sea creatures, he says, were carved on the back sides and bottom of the polished stones using a Foredom flex-shaft, laying out the creatures so they interact with those on the opposite side as the tower is turned.

First Place (Tie), Gem Objects

Tom Munsteiner, Thunder

Tom Munsteiner gave the cut used for his winning 370.68-ct. natural-colored citrine the name Thunder, because it reminded him of the natural phenomenon. Beyond that, he says, this fairly new design does not need an explanation: One look at the stone tells the whole story.

January/February 2006 • Style: The Gemmys on Stage - The 2006 Gemmys Winners • Selling: Semiprecious Revenge- Our Annual Retail Survey Results • News & Updates • In This Issue