Madagascar Unearthed: Gemstones of the Malagasy 

Absolutely! I always say that he has the best smile in Madagascar :)

Thanks, it is definitely an important part of what everyone in the industry to keep in mind :)

+napoworld Haha maybe one day I can go on the National Geographic Channel ;) Thanks for your support!

napoworld agreed

Not a problem :)

Haha thanks :)

Respect sir or mam ican bauying all saffair rough as Montana nijireain tanjaniyia if you have please replly iwill wet 009119296270 WhatsApp n.please don't forget thanku

Also if you want any ready stone in all sheab aveleble in very fine pollish if you have any demand please contact thanku

Thanks :) I have gone one step further too, I also documented my last trip to Madagascar when I put together a teaching program for the local people to teach them the basics of field gemmology. You can check out how it went here: Madagascar Sapphires: Exploring Malagasy Gem Regions and Teaching Gemology

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NcgRqA8QE9Y.html

Glad you enjoyed it :)

Thanks! It is very rewarding work :)

@@Lawsongems Local people never get a FAIR deal. By doing this, you're just inviting more foreigners to steal from the Malagasy people while you make yourself rich. If you really want to help, help them sell it for at least half as much as you are selling it for on your site.

@@Lawsongems bro I need your contact I have some crazy gemstones I want you to take a look at

Glad you enjoy the channel! As a geologist myself i like trying to add as much informationa as I can about that side of things without making it too boring for those who are fellow rockhounds haha!

Thanks :)

Thanks for your support!!!

Thanks!

Many thanks!

Haha thanks :) I'm glad you enjoyed it! Maybe one day I can get on to National Geographic :P

+nomenjandry zandry Haha no worries :)

Thanks 🙂. Tahiry is a great guy!

Glad you liked it :)

Thanks for your kind words, I am glad you liked the video!

Thanks :)

Lawson Gems wow amazing im stoked for that man! cant wait ! you really are doing your part. so, do you have instagram, or a facebook page?

Haha no worries!

@@Lawsongems 😀

For sure! We have put a lot of time and effort into giving back to these communities. If you have a look at another documentary I made a couple of years after this (Story Behind the Stone, ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-220DF2YiyJQ.html ) it gives a bit more background :)

Lawson Gems excellent thanks for info and update 🙏 !

Haha thanks! It has been a great experience.

+Groggy01 Stull Haha nice pick up on that one, when I first watched that scene I always wanted to do my own questing/adventure montage to the same tune =P

Thanks :)

Hi Zorhar, thanks for the kind words. The equipment you are looking at is all professional jeweller's gear. If you have a local jewellery supply company they should be able to help you out. Otherwise if you look up ball vice on eBay and you will see lots of options. For the lamp, it is actually part of a microscope set up, the jeweller shown is using the magnification to do very fine work. Again google or eBay jeweller's microscope, bench microscope or something similar and you should be able to find something similar :)

Haha thanks, glad you enjoyed it :)

thanks!

Thanks, glad you liked it :)

Thanks 🙂

These are titanite/sphene (both names are used). It has incredibly high dispersion and a high refractive index making the faceted stone very sparkly with nice fire. It is not a very common stone and this coupled with a slightly low hardness and tenancy to be an off yellow green colour, has kept it largely unseen in the commercial world of gems :/

Thanks!!!

Haha for sure! Have a look at my newer film about Madagascar (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-220DF2YiyJQ.html) and he does another interview (this is a few years on now) and again he ends the conversation with a really lovely and genuine moment :)

Thanks 😁

Madagascar is a pretty amazing place with amazing people :)

Thanks, glad you enjoyed the video 😁. We are now based in BKK as Mine to Market Media and Lawson Gems 🙂.

Unfortunately people like Tahiry and other locals are not set up for direct overseas trade as many of the don't have emails let alone a bank account making it tough to do business externally. This coupled with very tough (and expensive) export regulations/procedures (for those of us who don't like to smuggle gems out) makes it very difficult for them to trade outside Madagascar. That said, we are currently working on market creation for the locals but tat this stage we are starting small and just getting them to the point of being able to at least trade beyond local villages etc, so with any luck some day we and others will have made enough of a difference to get a thriving local to international trade up and running that actually benefits the locals.

Is there a particular gem material you are looking for?

Ah I see, well good on you for helping these people better their lives. I am not looking for a particular gem, I am just a new and enthusiastic collector looking for things I can't find hunting around California's Coast.

yes i can help you.

Haha yes, I try to only deal with people doing good things and are happy in their work. There are definitely bad areas within the trade, but from memory I believe that only around 2% of diamonds may be conflict stones, as to how much of this 2% reaches foreign markets I am not too sure. For coloured gems it is a lot more difficult to track things like this but take heart in the fact that gem mining is one of the most efficient ways of alleviating poverty and provides a means to live where there was none to millions of people across the globe. It may not be much that they are living on but it is better than having nothing or having to resort to things like crime or prostitution. That said, money isn't everything and some of the happiest people I have ever met have been living very simple lives maintained by the gem trade :)

@@Lawsongems What about de-forestation?

Thanks! Haha there are places all over the world that I would love to get to and film let alone the rest of Madagascar. For the moment what time and the various projects I am a part of of dictate where I can get to and what I can film, but who knows, perhaps I will be able to make it to Andilamena in the future :)

I am malagasy, but even i never been to andilamena or ilakaka as they are one of he world's first suppliers of ruby, sapphires and other gemstones... I have been living in the us and france 10 years ago for a total period of 6 years...and the most striking thing is i noticed that more and more malagasy people become rich by mining gemstones over here in madagascar, and then i had the urge to come back to my homeland and try to penetrate into the adventure, for the beauty of it is that one can travel around, see different peiple, cultures, horizons and at the same time possibly stumble upon a great stone and fulfill a lifetime dream, which is being rich and have a successful life...until today, never had the chance to start the adventure and it kinda makes me sad...but i definitely will, shall dig into the gemstone world someday, very soon i hope.. And i was wondering, how can i get that lamp and that sort of squared loop?? What is its real purpose on testing colored stones?? If someday you come by here in the capital again, please hit me up, either for a drink and to chat abot your experience in the field, i would greatly appreciate it... Thznks for the video, inspired me once again !!

Haha thanks, I am one of the lucky ones who has been able to turn their passion into their day job 😆

I run my own business but I do outside projects, like aid work, with both government and educational bodies. I have been a bit of a compulsive student of all things rocks and gems over the years haha. I started as an amateur rockhound when I was young then proceeded to gain my Bachelor of Science in Geology, after that I gained qualifications through the Gemmological Associations of Australia, Gemmological Associations of Great Britain, Gemological Institute of America and the Asian Institute of Gemological Sciences. I also traveled to many regions for trade and mining like Thailand, Burma, China, South Africa, Mozambique, Hong Kong etc, buying, selling and studying all the way. My best advice is to follow your passion and don't be afraid to get out of your comfort zone. If you can't move internationally, find local gem producing areas and start there, it is always satisfying to see just where the gems you are trading have come from and it also makes a great selling point if you have that first hand experience in the mining areas. Almost all countries will have at least a handful of locally produced gems and these are often a good starting point as you may just come across quartz or other lower value stones making it easier to start buying and selling without breaking the bank. But anyway, I do have a bit of a tendency to ramble on these sorts of topics, but I hope I have been able to help point you in the right direction and as always don't hesitate if you have further questions.

mickey mouse

Haha yeah, we all got a good laugh from that!

@@Lawsongems like and subscribe, congratulations for channel!!!

Do you mean at 11:23? This is a basic kit and book I put together but I think the tool you might be refering to is the dichroscope. This is on that I made myself modeled on a simple london dichroscope and as you might have guessed are used to identify between isotropic, dichroic and trichroic stones :)

+ludmila maria RAZANAKOTONIRINA Hi, sorry there seems to be a problem with RU-vid as the volume has only dropped recently. Hopefully we can get it fixed asap!

+ludmila maria RAZANAKOTONIRINA Hi after looking into it, it may be your operating system. We saw the same problem with the volume then noticed it was only on the computeres that have been upgraded to Windows 10. If you are on Windows 10 please check the following link on how to increase the volume, this worked perfectly for our computers (it will also work for Windows 7 and 8) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eDb49PWfOWs.html

Thanks 😁

It is hard to say, I have always had a passion for stones and got started on building my career straight out of high school by doing my Bachelor of Science in Geology and never looked back from there. I think it is definitely a rewarding career for those with the passion and drive to do so, but then I guess this could be said for any career haha. The world of gem trading has definitely become far more accessible in the last couple of decades with many countries opening up more and and international trade through the internet becoming so prominent. That said this also means that competition within the industry has never been greater as it is now so much easier for everyone to trade. This does also mean that a lot of uneducated people are selling stones they know nothing about which can often lead to complications and unhappy customers. My best suggestion would be to try you had at a basic gemmology course and perhaps get some work experiance with a gem dealer, cutter or jeweller or even just join a lapidary club. So as to whether it is a good career shift, that is all up to you :)

Thanks for replying, much appreciated. Do more good and more power to you.

Hi Marie, we have a lot of gems available on our website, www.lawsongems.com and we also have a new social enterprise we are starting up called Responsible Gemstone Traders and you can find out more at www.responsiblegemstones.com (bare with us on this site as it is just a temporary site until we get the proper one built as a functional ecommerce site)

Paraiba tourmaline is a stunning stone that comes out of Brazil, it gets its vivid colour from trace amounts of copper and is termed a "cuprian" tourmaline. There are also similar deposits in Mozambiquie that also produce cuprian tourmaline that look amazing, you just need to be careful when buying paraiba because some people will sell Mozambique cuprian tourmaline as paraiba (it is commonly accepted to call them "paraiba type" tourmaline, though I feel that they should just be called cuprian) so always make sure to ask where it came from before buying, because true paraiaba tourmaline is currently worth more than Mozambique cuprian tourmaline.

This trip was definitely a great adventure :)

Haha I would love to get over there some day. It is definitely on my bucket list!!!

Unfortunately most of these people don't have computers or even an email address and rely heavily on foreign brokers.

we are regularly visiting madagascar ,we buy directly from miners.its very cheap there.

Haha yep it sure is! I've always wanted to use it for some kind of walking/adventuring scene in homage to the original scene from Cowboy Bebop :P

YES IT IS! thats my favourite bebop song.

Hi, sorry it was hard to understand, I will definietly try to get some subs up :)

Hi I have added subs titles and you can turn them on in the RU-vid options :)

+Lawson Gems thank you :)

Dear sir, please e mail me the contact details of Mr Dida to supun_w@hotmail.com

thanks!

I am wearing a partially polished piece of Australian Chrysoprase :)

Yes, it is exciting to see how the new Ethiopian deposits evolve.

😁

PEARL GEMS Dealer of precious and semi precious Gemstone. +94779982456

😁😁😁

:)

We have actually done a large amount of aid work in Madagascar including setting up a lapidary center for women that are victims of domestic abuse. If you want to see some of the impact of our work you can check out another documentary I put together about the Malagasy gemstone supply chain 😁: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-220DF2YiyJQ.html . It is called "Story Behind the Stone"

👋

Haha yeah, I couldn't resist adding in that part. It was a very valiant effort though wasn't it 😂?

Haha it is definitely on my bucket list!

That is our aim 😁