Museum of Natural History DC

[pregcurious]

There are probably other posts about this, but I thought it would fun to write about my visit today to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Of course, I went straight to the gems and minerals exhibit. I've been here several times, but it was either before I started buying gems, or with other people who didn't appreciate gemstones.

I didn't take any pictures, but here's a pretty good video of the first room (which is pretty small), showing many of the main pieces:
http://wn.com/The_Carmen_Lucia_Ruby_Ring_English_Version

This first room is pretty dark, and holds the Hope diamond (in a relatively new setting shown below) in a stand-alone case, with crystals and gemstone jewelry pieces in floor and small wall-inset cases. The Hope diamond is surprisingly dark in color, but still has great brilliance, which is really neat. It illustrates how stones with great clarity can carry deep hue, saturation, and tone very well. There are 2 giant pink and yellow topaz crystals that are amazing. There a several jewelery pieces including rubies from Burma (rough, a bracelet, and the Carmen Lucia ring shown below). There are several pieces with emeralds from Columbia (including ring shown below), and sapphires (mostly Sri Lankan if I remember correctly--amazing necklace below), and other high end stones.

In a larger and open white room are large cases with crystals and gems, and some jewelry pieces of every gemstone I've ever wanted to see. I am partial to red stones, so I looked at these. In the ruby section, they have several Thai rubies that had great clarity and the well-known rosy red Thai color. There's also a beautiful stop light red beryl that is included.

 

[JewelFreak]

Thanks for the mini-tour, nice to see those beauties. I haven't been there in so so many years. Looks like the gems are nicely lighted, too.

 

[pregcurious]

The jewels in the darker room are lit like you would see in a jewelry store, except the rest of the room is dark. It makes the pieces look like they're glowing.

Here's a link to the Smithsonian's pictures of gems from exhibit:
http://geogallery.si.edu/index.php?cat=1&page=1

Here's a link to someone's Flickr pictures from the exhibit for those of you who want real life pictures.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17554153@N00/tags/jewelry/

The best Burmese rubies in the exhibit are in a bracelet. The Flickr picture makes the bracelet rubies look very pink. The Smithsonian picture below makes it look orange-red. In real life, it does not have any orange to my eyes, and in fact is red with ever the slightest touch of pink/purple in the lights they use for the display. My guess is that different lighting changes the color of the rubies, and may also affect their fluorescence.

I am still searching for a picture of their Thai rubies, which are red with a touch of rose-like purple, and have great crystalline structure (i.e. very clear).

 

[pregcurious]

You can browse and search for pictures of a large variety of gems from the Smithsonian here. This is a great resource for people looking for pics of good stones. (Not all the stones in the exhibit were top specimens, but I impressed with most.)
http://geogallery.si.edu/index.php?cat=3

Highlights from the exhibit are here:
http://geogallery.si.edu/index.php

 

[Arkteia]

Thank you!