Category Archives: Lake Superior Agates

Agate Expo

Dnosaur Bone Trio-soon to be jewelry.

Many of you know that we are invited to be jewelry vendors at the Agate Expo in Cedarburg, Wisconsin next month. If you haven’t made plans to be there, you might want to!

Just the list of exhibits alone is astonishing, with 111 exhibitors listed. You will certainly see agates and jaspers you have never before heard of or imagined. A symposium will be held on July 7 with 12 agate experts speaking about their research. July 8-10 the show floor and exhibits will be open. You can see great agates, and that’s where you elect your favorite Snob Appeal Jewelry! On July 9 a banquet will feature Brad Cross as a speaker, plus a Live Auction and dance. Brad has “written the book” about Mexican Agates.

Lake Superior Agate with floating agate.

Madagascar Ammonite looks like falling leaves.

An unusual Laker

A coveted black & Red Kentucky Agate

This is the third International Agate Show we have participated in. In 2008 the Wonderful World of Agates was held in Wisconsin. (It was before I started blogging, if you can believe that, so the link will send you to David Von Bargen’s entertaining report on the event. He barely mentions agate jewelry though. Some Agate Lovers hate that anyone would cut and wear these treasures.) You can see some of our pictures from the Celebration of Agates in our Snob Blog July 2012.

If you love agates like we do, this show should be a must see trip. All the leading experts on agates from around the world will be speaking at the show, signing their books, and making themselves available for any questions you might have.

A Laguna Agate Pendant and Earring Set

Here are some of the jewelry pieces we intend to display and sell at the show. We are known for our fine agate Jewelry which earned us a spot as vendors. Our specialty is Lake Superior Agate jewelry but we also create jewelry made from rare and beautiful agates from around the world. We, or course will have our Michigan Greenstones with us, but most of our jewelry will be top notch agate pendants from many different agates. Visit us and count how many different kinds you recognize!

Boulder Opal

A fine Kentucky Agate pendant

Quartz crystal in a Quartz (Lodelite)

Owyhee Picture Jasper and other Great Lakes Gemstones

Can you guess why I called this pendant “Sleeping Bear”

North Shore Thomsonite

Now that the Tucson shows are done, the jewelry creation process is moving forward. Over the past week I’ve made several pieces of jewelry, especially Michigan stones, from Lake Superior Agates, Datolites, Dark-eyed Thomsonite, and a really special and amazing Laker pendant.

Yellow Snow-don’t eat it. I did not enhance the color in this at all.

Sugar and stripes.

This is why Lake Superior Agates are my favorite gemstones. This one is “Stripes in Stripes”

I love these. I called this “The Red Continent”.

I have had this particular Laker slab that shows the classic Laker reds, but also Citrine. When you find the reds and the yellows together it is surprising and fantastic!

Even I was amazed. This one is called “Lady Luck”, a unisex piece of jewelry. I test wore it and won a fifty-fifty drawing. Do you need some luck?

A really odd Waterlevel Laker with a lot going on. It is not named yet.

Other Lakers I made into pendants are so very unusual with the banded Laker floating in Sugar Quartz or with the more common sugar Quartz surrounded by the colorful laker.

Peachy-pink Mesnard Datolite.

A Yellow Quincy-Outstanding!

Colorful Datolite is always a winner, and a gorgeous Peach from Mesnard, and a Quincy Yellow are new pieces. Really nice colored Datolite is getting very hard to find. The old piles are held by private interests (not allowing hunting for liability reasons), or crushed and hauled for road fill. Any colorful Datolite demands premium prices. I’ve been advising people to buy Datolite Jewelry now, if they like it. Old stocks of Datolite are being used up.

Greenstone-Central Ex pile (when there was a pile)

Just for variety I did a North Shore Thomsonite, which is another beautiful stone from the Lake Superior Region, especially Minnesota and the Keweenaw Peninsula.

Amongst all these Michigan gemstones, why did I feature a western Owyhee Picture Jasper? Well, when we saw it at a show, it looked so much like a picture of a Michigan lakeshore. If you have ever visited Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, you will recognize the resemblance to this beautiful Owyhee Picture Jasper. Welcome to my creative world!

Lake Superior Agate Jewelry, My Favorite!

A wonderful Lake Superior Tube Agate before and after making into a pendant.

Everyone claims that certain types of agates are the most colorful, interesting, and rare, but few agates come close to Lake Superior Agates for variety and coloration. As far as rarity; yes some LSA’s are very rare. Lake Superior Agates are also my favorite stone.

Lake Superior Agate floating in a sea of Quartz.

A Laker in a sea of Citrine.

A Laker floating in Amethyst

A nice group of Lakers. 4 pair of these cabochons are opposite sides of the same Lakers.

Here's the smiley guy in the group.

This blog highlights some of the best Lake Superior Agates I’ve made into jewelry over the last 10 years. If the agate is still for sale, we have hooked a link from the picture to out website. Many are long gone, but maybe you’ll get lucky.

An amazing Laker

Painted Agates are like someone took a wind paint brush and threw on paint.

Painted Agates are like someone took a wide paint brush and threw on paint.

Floating eyes are usually at or near the agate's surface. Careful cutting develops them.

Floating eyes are usually at or near the agate's surface. Careful cutting preserves them.

A Fortification/semi Water Level Laker. I call it a fort in a fort.

Proof that Lakers can resemble other Agates. This one apes a Montana Moss Agate, but found buried in a Minnesota gravel pit.

Proof that Lakers can resemble other Agates. This one apes a Montana Moss Agate, but was found buried in a Minnesota gravel pit.

I purchase most of my Lakers rough. Most good stuff comes from gravel pits in Minnesota, and I have no access to these sites. I also use flawless or nearly flawless Lake Superior Agates in my jewelry, and believe me, with the beating Lakers took, the good majority are cracked. The agates in the Minnesota Gravel Pits were carried as glacial till from the Lake Superior area via many glaciers that pushed into this area, than receded, leaving glacial till in their wake. We now call this glacial till gravel. These glaciers pushed Lake Superior Agates as far south as Kansas. You see glacial evidence today as large rounded boulders left scattered randomly about.

Lake Superior Agates were formed in Amygdaloidal Basalt. This was bubbly basalt and the gas bubbles floated to the surface, and those that did not escape before the basalt cooled remained vacant. The bubbles are called vesicles and as the bubbles rose they became smaller and more numerous. The basalt, as it cooled, shrunk and cracked allowing silica and other minerals to enter through these cracks and fill the bubbles (vesicles). There are many theories as to how agates form in vesicles, sometimes totally opposite of other theories. I’ll let the researchers discuss these theories, my interest is in the colors and patterns that make wonderful agate jewelry! The Lake Superior area was ripe with iron, and it was common for iron to mix with the silica producing the red colors as iron oxide formed. The classic red and white Laker is referred to as a “Candy Striper”, and cannot be mistaken for any other type of agate. Sometimes Lakers can be white or clear and show a ghost banding, or the core of the agate can be just Quartz. One theory says that minerals that colored the agates ran out and whatever space was left was filled with plain Silica.

A classic Paint Agate

Sagenite Lakers contain metallic inclusions, usually Rutile. This makes them look like plant material is present.

A fine Water Level agate

I could talk Lake

An unusual Sagenite Agate.

I was very stumped on this Laker. After consulting agate expert John Marshall it was determined that this is basically and unclassifiable Laker.

Superior Agates all day, but in this blog I want to just show you some different LSA types. You can scratch your heads as to how exactly these formed. I don’t fret about how agates are formed; I just cut, polish, and make jewelry from them. If you follow links to my jewelry pages you will see that I have over 50 pendants online and many more in my art show collection. It is fascinating to see how different each stone can be. The more I work with them, the more I enjoy Lake Superior Agates and the variations we find in them. The variety of types, and combinations of colors and patterns make Lakers the most remarkable of members of the Quartz Family.

Come visit us at the 2016 Agate Expo, July 7-9, 2016 in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. www.AgateExpos.com

The best Laker I ever personally found on the Shores of the Keweenaw. Loaned from Bonnie Reed's collection.

Snob Appeal Jewelry-Cleaning the Barn

Just a few of the many buckets we sorted today.

I'm pretty excited about this job.

“How do you know what’s in this barn?” is asked regularly by Bonnie. The answer is usually vague. I know mostly what is in the barn, but there are rocks in there from many old collections I’ve bought over the years. I have no idea what exactly is in some of those buckets. Sometimes you just have to have a look.

These are some nice Lakers.

It's always nice when you re-find a whole bucket of Lakers.

Fossils

We hauled out random buckets and began sorting. I found stuff I had forgotten was there, and a few rocks I had no idea I had!

Binghamite before and after. It's a shame you cannot see the tigers eye like colors in this beauty from Minnesota's Iron Range.

I found a bucket of unsorted Lake Superior Agates I recall buying from a friend that owns a gravel pit in Minnesota, as well as another small selection of what appeared to be grade “A” Lakers I must have sorted years ago. I took a picture of the sorted stones in water. Are they nice…great jewelry potential!

A bonus bucket of nice Jaspers.

Another bucket was assorted Jasper and Jasperlite and other interesting quartz material from Minnesota gravel pits.

I found a bucket of Petrified Wood and one of fossils. On top of that bucket was a floating rock.

There were lots of jewelry grade stones, specimens, and a few garden rocks. One larger rock piqued my interest, so I cut that one. Although the inside was colorful, I donated it to Bonnie’s rock garden. I found an old piece of Binghamite that is always an exciting stone to work with. This particular rock was very discreet, and it was fortunate I was sorting in the sun, or I would have missed the telltale golden flashes from the stone.

Petrified Wood.

Dinosaur Bone, Ruby in Zoisite, Ruby in Fuchsite, and Kammererite.

I think my favorite find were a few rocks I knew I had, but have not seen them in a year. The closed bucket. A large piece of Dinosaur Bone, a piece or Ruby in Zoisite, one of Ruby in Fuchsite, and one specimen of Kammererite (and Bonnie remembered how to spell it) that I got on a recent trip to Russia; no, wait that was the trip to Tucson where I bought it from a guy from Russia! Just seeing if you’re paying attention. I’m sure pleased I found these. I have other stuff to look through, but I think I have to wait for Bonnie to ask me “How do you know what’s in this barn?” again.

A large rock I found in a bucket. Let's cut it!

It looks nice, but not jewelry. Next stop; Bonnies Rock Garden.