Museum Quality! Here is an amazing Chatham Emerald cluster specimen, a real piece of gemstone history.
Clusters this large are impossible to still find from the early days of Chatham, they rarely ever come to market. The are also no longer grown in such a way. My hope is that this one finds it way into a museum at some point.
It weighs an amazing 113.2 grams / 566 carats. It measures approx. 8.98 cm long x 3.47 cm tall x 3.39 cm deep. This is a beautiful emerald green cluster of well terminated crystals.
The rear of the specimen shows the curvature of the growth against the crucible wall. Since most specimens are much smaller, you rarely see this.
Though many types of gemstones have been produced synthetically in laboratories, some of the finest were developed by a man named Carroll Chatham of San Francisco, California.
Some have said the finest his company ever produced, were done so before his passing in the early 1980's. This cluster is from that time.
Chatham Emeralds are lab grown. Even though they are lab grown, they are real emeralds. All gems and minerals are a combination of atomic molecules that bond to form a specific chemical structure.
Sometimes called synthetic, lab-created gems have the same chemical structure and composition as those found in nature, usually with some additional variation so that they can be distinguished from the natural grown minerals.
This variation allows the new gem to be identified after cutting as lab created, often to the specific lab it was grown in. I believe these emeralds fluoresce brighter that any emerald created by nature, due to higher trace amounts of chromium.
This is the last specimen I still have that were purchased from John Chatham many years ago, and were from his fathers old stock before his passing.
Even my photos cannot do the color of these Emeralds justice.
