TribeBlog

There has been a lot of interest recently in Amazonite jewelry. For some cosmic reason for which we are currently unaware, we have had an odd influx of requests for us to restock jewelry from this particular stone. We had been looking for rough to no avail when we stumbled across a photo of a very pretty piece that had evidently originated from right here in Virginia, less than an hour from Onetribe headquarters.

Anyone that knows my crew personally knows that we are nosy little kids and we like to get dirty. We go on road trips for our stone and wood pretty frequently and really enjoy the adventure associated with personally sourcing the materials and choosing them by hand. So we got the bright idea to go right to the source. We did some snooping around and found the location and contact information for the owner of a mine here in Virginia that supposedly had a great deal of Amazonite. We made some phone calls and discovered that while the mine is currently closed and not open to the public, because we were local and were specifically interested in buying rough material the owner would meet us there the next day at 10am. We were excited but in no way prepared for the trip we had today.

The mine itself is located about an hour away from our studio out in the woods, about a hundred yards behind a simple metal gate with a No Trespassing sign on it. We arrived a bit early and spent some time walking around on the gravel road and into the woods checking out the wildlife (doves, woodpeckers and some sweet moss patches). The owner arrived and unlocked the gate and we proceeded toward the old, now mostly empty gift shop building. The first two things we saw were huge petrified wood logs (also originated from Virginia, a short distance away) and this several hundred pound monster – the biggest piece of Amazonite I’d ever seen to date.

We waited for the mine owner to feed the resident cat (a hugely fluffy sweetheart, black and orange and a little dirty) before proceeding a short distance behind the Gift Shop to a shed, a small office area and stone examination room full of buckets of Amazonite, quartz and several other types of stone from the mine. This wasn’t just any Amazonite, this was some of the nicest material I have ever personally laid eyes on.

This large gem grade specimen, slightly over 1lb in weight and completely solid in color with no inclusions, will likely become some very special pieces of jewelry.

We spent 30-40 minutes in the frigid cold going through these buckets, hand picking what we felt to be the best pieces for making our jewelry. At one point I kept dropping stones because they, and the air, were so cold I couldn’t feel them to hold onto them.

My staff are going to make fun of me for posting photos of myself, but to my credit, I wasn’t the one that took it and it’s one of the only ones we have of one of us holding a stone and not making a goofy face. We also met this monster, which evidently simply fell from the ceiling of the mine shaft a while back, so solid and dense that it landed on the rock floor without breaking. It’s nearly three feet long.

After a while we decided we needed to warm up so we took what we’d picked out at that point and headed back to the Gift Shop to weigh our bounty and warm up a bit. They still had some displays up and it was pretty amazing to get to see memorabilia from the early 1900’s when the mine was first started as well as some of the best samples of various stones that they had recovered over the years, old mining photos and equipment, etc. After taking a peek around we headed back out to another storage area, a large shipping container also full of mine specimens and  continued hand choosing suitable pieces of Amazonite, as well as some interesting crystal structures of quartz for our personal use.

Many of the materials are not sold, simply crushed and distributed across the grounds for school trips, which come as field trips and pay a set fee per student to learn about geology, shovel around in the ground for a while and leave with buckets of rad rocks for the classroom and the kids. Those materials had no prices so he gave us some pieces for us to try messing about with. From what I understand, most of the visitors and most of the funds are the result of these school and rock hound club trips to pan and screen for items found on the grounds, which they are permitted to keep. The Amazonite just happens to be the majority of the deposit located inside the mine itself, and the funds from these visitors helps offset the cost of the process of getting it out of the ground.

Another gem grade specimen, below, one of the nicest of the day, which was given to us on good faith, on the condition that it would serve as a display piece in our cases here at the studio. Sorry, guys, no jewelry from this one, but you’re welcome to come look at it after we polish it up

The owner offered to give us a short tour of the grounds before we weighed the rest of our picks and settled up, and being total nerds we jumped at the chance. Taking a stroll over the grounds, we were first shown the water trough and screens where collectors and kids are permitted to sort through their buckets of loot for quartz, garnet, amazonite and other local finds.

Cameron and Rachel pictured above chatting with the mine owner about the geology of the local land and what minerals can be found in the area. I wandered around with the camera a bit and found this beauty poking out of the ground.

A photo was enough, we found what we’d come looking for so this one stayed in the ground for a happy kid to find. We were then ushered further into the woods toward the actual mine operation itself, a surprisingly low tech setup consisting of a small building as the base of operations and a small vertical mine shaft which stretched down into the ground just shy of 100 feet, and extends for some 400+ feet underneath the grounds of the mine’s property.

A large wooden boom and winch are used to lower a large metal container into the ground which can accomodate a load of about 800lbs of rough material. The mining itself is accomplished by core drilling a circumference and using small blasts to continue forming the shaft in the intended direction. From there it’s all shovels and back-breaking hand work getting the rubble back to the shaft entrance to be hauled out.

In the photo above you can see some large pieces of Amazonite next to Cameron, and for scale, here they are again beside Rachel while she’s conversing with the miner.

We were permitted a peek down the shaft itself, which is currently filled with water. The water table constantly floods the mine, and pumps must be in operation 24hrs a day during the season when they are pulling out material. Because they have been closed for a while the pumps were off and you can see the water, which is very, very deep.

The temperature in the mine itself is surprisingly warm, as it’s a constant 50-something degrees after a certain distance underground, as the heat from the core of the earth radiates outward and you are insulated from the cold above. The haze in the bottom of the photo is actually the flash bouncing off steam rising from the water below.

Walking back up toward where we started, we had a chat about the mine itself, the history (for example, the government controlled the mine during WWII for its mineral content). It is a very small operation and you’d never know it was here if you were just wandering through the woods, aside from the signage and hints of machinery here and there. Really a super neat place.

At this point it was about time to pack up and head home, so we wandered back up to the Gift Shop to weight the rest of our stone and settle the financial aspect of the trip. We conversed for a while about this and that before parting ways with the kind gentleman that helped make the day possible. We were all elated as we headed back to the studio with our ~30lbs of hand picked Virginia Amazonite – we all admitted we were certainly surprised at the quality and even a little proud of our home state for “making” such a beautiful stone (yeah, we’re nerds).

So here’s the important part – the result of our cold day of nerding it up at a local mine for you guys! Some of the nicest Amazonite rough you’d ever want to see, some of which will be turned into cabochons, some of which will be sent to our other workshop to be turned into a stock run of Amazonite plugs far nicer than most anyone has ever seen before, some material that will be kept on hand here at the studio for custom orders, and some material that is just far too nice to do anything with other than sit and admire for its beauty and nature’s never-ending ingenuity.

Onetribe is about more than jewelry, it’s about an experience. A narrative.. a dialogue between you, us and this beautiful planet which never ceases to amaze. We truly enjoy discovering these materials and bringing them to you in the form of items to cherish as your own. We like to think that providing this kind of detail and level of interaction about how we work and what we do really appeals to many of you, as so many companies nowadays just source materials and mass produce things with no regard for history, tradition, or even simply your curiousity when it comes to the how and why of the products you seek to purchase. Thank you to all of you for allowing Onetribe to be a part of your journey.. we love it!