Enormous Cat’s-Eye Aquamarine
Figure 1. Left: A 586.43 ct cat’s-eye aquamarine donated by Gary Bowersox and Kathleen Kolt-Bowersox to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History gem collection. Photo by Robert Weldon; courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Right: Dr. Jeffrey Post (left) and Gary Bowersox with the cat’s-eye aquamarine. Photo by Kathleen Kolt-Bowersox.
On the AGTA show’s opening day, we were on hand as Gary Bowersox and Kathleen Kolt-Bowersox donated an extraordinary cat’s-eye aquamarine to Dr. Jeffrey Post, mineralogist and curator-in-charge of gems and minerals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (figure 1).
Figure 2. Left: Kathleen Kolt-Bowersox holding the 7,700 ct aquamarine rough before it was cut. Right: The rough aquamarine was cut and polished in Sri Lanka by Rohitha Perera. Photos by Gary Bowersox.
The 586.43 ct untreated transparent light greenish blue aquamarine with a sharp cat’s-eye is from the Pech Valley pegmatite mine in Afghanistan. The rough (figure 2, left) weighed approximately 7,700 ct and was kept for 15 years before it was finally cut in 2017 by Rohitha Perera in Sri Lanka (figure 2, right). The Bowersoxes have several other cut gems from this find, with the next largest weighing in at 541.96 ct.
