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The acquisition of specimens has a lot
of serendipity connected with it.
It's hard to go out and say, we need this or we need that,
because you may look forever and never
find specifically those things.
But you may, in the process, come across something
you didn't expect to find and that you can't live without.
Of course, having that feeling of,
can't living without something, can be dangerous,
especially if you're on a limited budget
like a museum is.
So you have to pick and choose your opportunities.
And sometimes you have to get lucky.
I consider that I got very lucky in having
the opportunity to acquire this gold crystal here.
It had just recently been obtained
by the dealer in Brazil.
And he actually heard about the discovery at Alta Floresta
and sent a runner, if you will, far
to the North-- state of Mato Grosso--
to acquire whatever specimens he could.
The runner was actually a dealer on the street in Ouro Preto.
And he jumped on his motorcycle, motored up hundreds of miles,
up to the area where these were found, and bought the lot.
And the crystals from this lot ended up
in a number of notable collections.
The Smithsonian obtained one that,
to me, is a core brother to this one.
And I was fortunate enough to be there shortly
after the dealer acquired them.
And so I got first crack and this was my choice.
This is a rather nice benitoite specimen here.
Beautiful crystallisation, good crystal size, beautiful luster.
This specimen has an interesting story.
And the other half of it is even more remarkable.
This piece here was donated to the museum
in a collection back in the 1950s.
And it was actually donated by two brothers who
were teenagers at the time and today are pretty well
known in the gem business, the Kazanjian brothers.
Their father arranged for them to purchase this collection
and donate it to the museum.
They didn't know what they were donating though,
when they donated this specimen, because it was completely
covered with the white material you see here, natrolite.
It wasn't until many years later when
I was looking through the collection
that I decided that there might be something a little more
interesting on the inside.
And using hydrochloric acid, I etched away much
of the natrolite and exposed the benitoite crystals.
Now, while this is a very pretty specimen,
the one you will see on display in our gallery
is really quite unique because it's
a stacking-- a wreath, if you will-- of benitoite crystals.
And that specimen was attached to this one.
The reason that it's not attached anymore
is that the front of that specimen and the front
of this specimen actually faced one another.
So we had to separate the two in order
to display each one properly to its best advantage.
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