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The Houston Gem and Mineral Society (HGMS)
sponsors the 53rd annua
l Gem, Jewelry, Mineral, and Fossil Show, September 22 -
24, 2006. The event last year was canceled by the arrival of Hurricane Rita, the
only mineral show I know of called off by bad weather.
I have been in Houston since 1983 and the annual trip to view the various exhibits, dealer tables, and educational activities has been enjoyable. The first time I went, the show was housed in the Alpert Thomas Convention Center in downtown Houston. The venue changed to the George R. Brown Convention Center after it was built in 1987. The present home for the show is at the Humble Civic Center in a more suburban setting just east of Houston Intercontinental airport.
Entrance to the Humble Civic Center.
The HGMS Gem, Jewelry, Mineral, and Fossil Show prides itself on the educational aspects of the mineral collecting hobby. Fossils and lapidary arts are represented and membership in the society promotes awareness of Earth Sciences in general. Fully 1/5 of all attendees are school-aged kids who benefit from educational activities concurrent with the show.
Pictured here is Sam Koster of Columbia Trading Company conversing with an un-identified customer. Sam, a local Houston dealer, usually has good specimens at reasonable prices.
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Leached bluish chalcedony from Sarwadi, Jalna, Maharashtra, India. |
Chalcedony overgrowths replacing an unknown zeolite? from Jamner, Madhya Predesh, India |
Since no new mineral discoveries have appeared in dealer stocks, unusual and strange specimens were evident.
Chris Wright (center, Hawaiian shirt) of Wright's Rock shop fresh from the Denver show on his way home to Arkansas. Last year at this time when Hurricane Rita was bearing down on the Houston area, Chris was able to beat the 200 mile traffic jam by leaving 6 hours before mandatory evacuations were ordered for the upper Gulf Coast.
Chris had some unusual specimens of galena pseudomorphous after pyrrhotite from Nikolaevskiy mine, Dal'negors, Russia. You can see the trigonal symmetry of the pyrrhotite (for which Dal'negors is well known for) preserved as galena.
Isaias Casanova of IC minerals, center, hiding behind the light fixture is helping a couple of budding collectors pick out the best mineral from the table in front.
Here are a couple of very dark green epidote-on-quartz specimens from the Siph Mine, Columbia that Isaias had stashed away under the tables. Not quite up to the "Green Monster mine" specimens, but sharp and shiny anyway.
Here's the crew from Rob Lavinsky's The Arkenstone manning the booth. The tall fellow in the white shirt is Stretch Young.
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| Andradite pseudomorph after rhodochrosite. | Triple pseudomorph, Ikite(?) to calcite to opal. White Cliffs, NSW Territories, Australia. Stretch Young collection. |
This exhibit of "food" has it's own website, www.rockfoodtable.com. Every year the menu gets upgraded. All "food" items are rocks, minerals, and lapidary items which happen to resemble gastronomic delights.
Artist John Fischner. John's first and lasting interest has been dinosaurs, which he strives to visualize through his art and filmmaking. At his Dreamstar Productions studio in Needville Texas he sculpts models and life-sized dinosaurs for museums, scientific institutions, parks and dino-art collectors. John has also been known to create dragons and other mythical creatures.
Even though there were no competitive mineral exhibits this year, these two displays of first-class specimens were provided by the Houston Area Mineral Society.
Dinosaurs are a big hit with the kids. These replica castings of T-Rex and Triceratops from the Cretaceous period are courtesy of Dinosaur World collection in San Antonio.
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