Brian Cook: On Paraíba tourmaline and a colour the world had never seen

00:00:00: Brian My eyes had never seen that colour at that frequency. I mean, we see those beautiful colours in the sea and in copper stones and this and that and the other, but coming from a gem crystal, those colours, that was new. My brain had never perceived that, so it must've catalysed something. So I was really affected, I was like, obsessed with it.

00:00:25: Laurent SSEF presents the Hidden Gem Podcast, conversations with the world's leading people behind the journey of gems and jewels, from the source to the finished piece. Today on Hidden Gems, I'm speaking with Brian Cook, geologist, gem hunter, and one of the first people outside Brazil to encounter Paraiba tourmaline when it was discovered in the late 1980s. Brian's story begins with geology studies in California, a young family, and a connection to Brazil through his wife's roots. And it takes him deep into the outback of Northeast Brazil, where a new colour of tourmaline was about to change the gem world forever. We talk about exploration, discovery, and what it means to encounter something your eyes have never seen before. And we also explore his decades-long relationship with a rutilated quartz mining community in Bahia and his work to support artisanal miners on the ground.

00:01:22: Laurent Well, Brian, it's so nice to see you. I wish we could have done this in Brazil with warmer weather, but here we are in Munich during the Inhorgenta show. I wanted to have a chat with you kind of about your life story, how you got started in gems. You married very young. You started travelling also very young, you studied geology. You got addicted to gems also pretty young. You've been in the business for over 50 years.

00:01:46: Brian That's right, that's true.

00:01:47: Laurent How did you get started? How did all this start?

00:01:50: Brian Well, as you said, I was always interested in the outdoors. And in fact, the first thing I ever gave my wife, who was a girlfriend at the time in high school we met, she was an exchange student. During the Easter break, we went hiking and camping out on the Colorado River. And me and some buddies, we hiked out to these needle peaks. And lo and behold, there was an old mine up there. It's called the jackpot mine. And I found some chrysocolla, some green pretty rocks. And that was the first thing I ever gave her, as look what I here have something pretty. So I've always been fascinated by beauty and minerals and rocks. And my choice of study when I went to college was geology. Since we married very young, And we began raising a family after five years of being married, after various adventures in travelling and such. Well, that's when we began our college studies. And one of the things that I decided would help us financially, because we were quite poor and just had our first child and raising that child, was when her mother would visit and stay for two or three months. At some point, I asked her to bring some gems from Salvador Bahia, which is where she's from. And I knew that there was a particular shop, Esmeralda Lapidação, that I had met when we were living in Brazil in 1979, 1980. And I said, go there and get some gems, amethyst, simple stuff, and she brought them up. And that's when I began. My cold calls to local jewellers up in Northern California, Marin County, Sonoma County.

00:03:43: Laurent So your love for Brazil and Brazilian gems started with your girlfriend, wife, and then her family.

00:03:47: It was, that was the connection. That was the connection, and they knew nothing about it, but I quickly learned about the quality of gemstones, the beauty, good cuts, et cetera. So that's where it started, really, literally, around 1980, 81.

00:04:05: Laurent But you didn't come from a family that had a gemstone tradition. So when your mother-in-law brought these gems back from Brazil, what was a beautiful gem for you? How did you kind of learn that process of separating good from bad or beautiful from not so beautiful?

00:04:20: Brian It's pretty simple, it's just aesthetics. You can catch a beautiful cut stone, it's more brilliant, you see the colour better. If it has a quote window, then I could immediately see that. And that was a very simple process of selecting stones that weren't windowed, because these are all native cut in Brazil. And that's where it started. So while I'm studying geology at Sonoma State University in Sonoma County, I told my geology professors that I'm here to learn geology. I'm not here to get a degree. And lo and behold, opportunity knocked at my door. And my geology friend in Brazil, who is actually part of the family, but he was a gold geologist. And he was working on a gold project in Bahia. And he called and he said, hey, you know, there's this new discovery of emeralds happening out in the outback place called Sokoto. And I thought that was very interesting. And my neighbours who were really mentors of mine, one was a biology professor at the junior college, the other was an entrepreneur and started the first organic soil production in Sonoma County at that time. Anyway, they said, hey, do you think you can get some emeralds for us? Do you go buy some emerald?" I go, yes. So they rounded up some cash and sent me to Brazil to buy emerald. So that was a great adventure. And I told my teachers, I'll be back in a couple of weeks, more or less. And I took off. And with my geology buddy, we drove out to Socotó, which is near the, it's northeast of the Carnaíba emeralds, which we're already producing. For quite a while and went to this camp. You know, it was like throwing up shacks and houses and shafts going in and I wandered around that place and it was so fascinating and you know, I got some great photos and I tried my hand at buying rough, very difficult. Emerald rough is very tricky, it's got schist and it's, so I did and it successful. I bought rough, I took it back to my friend's shop in Salvador. He cut some gems, and I returned home with those gems, and that was when I really got the bug for I like this. This is exciting. And while I was running around those pits and working with the miners, trying to successfully choose rough, there was specimens there in the schist with the emeralds running through it. So I bought a couple for myself to bring back. I came back. And I would do slideshows for the class. And my teacher, I brought in the sample of the emerald and he looks at it and he goes, can I buy that? And I thought about, well, let's see, I paid 20 bucks for it, I'll sell it for 100. I said 100 bucks and he said, yeah. So bingo, I'm going, wow, I'll have to remember to pick up more minerals. And of course I knew nothing about. The, quote, ethics or the proper way to do this and that. And back in the early 80s, you know, it's like I just put the rock in a suitcase and.

00:07:49: Laurent Were these dangerous days then back in Brazil? I mean, I'm thinking of all these images that Salgado shot of gold mining in the Amazon and it seemed it was kind of the wild west. Was it the same for gem mining in Brazil back then?

00:08:02: Brian It is and it still is in some places and it was then, but I have to say that gem mining does not have the danger of the gold camps. It's a whole different universe. When a very, very valuable stone is discovered, like the alexandrites or the Paraiba Tourmaline, then those issues do arise. But in general, no it's bot that dangerous.

00:08:32: Laurent And has Emerald always been your stone or did you then start looking at other stones in Brazil or how did your journey continue?

00:08:39: Well, so on another. Trip to Brazil and I'm still in college. My friend... You're still in college today? No, no, no. I was in college at the time. So this was probably around 1982 or 3. I did another trip back to Brazil in search of gems and such because we were supplementing our income this way, raising two children now. So my friend at the lapidary shop He said, hey, you know, there's a stone. I don't even know what it's called, but it's been years since I've been there. You want to go? And so we ventured out to the middle of Bahia. It was a two-day trip in those days. The roads were terrible. And we go deep into this remote valley and the deeper we go into it, I'm just getting blown away by the beauty, the remoteness, the greenery. And it turns out I end up at this little village, Hemedius. And what they're mining is rutilated quartz and smoky quartz. So I show up at this village. They tell me that I'm the first foreigner they've ever seen in this village and the stones blow me away. And so the elder of the village, the main crystal guy, I purchased some specimens from him and took them back to the States. And then I developed this long relationship with that village beginning around 1983. And to this day, that's where we have our rutilated quartz mines in that region. So it's been a long connection with them. But that was part of the story of me getting into the mineral business. And the first shipment I sent back to America, I didn't know how to do it, but I wanted to be careful. I had met Jean DeMouthe . At the San Francisco Museum of Natural History. I was introduced to her. I went to some GIA event that Bill Boyajian was giving a talk and I was very excited about gems and the whole thing then. And I met Jean DeMouthe and I asked her, I said, hey, can I send a shipment to the museum? Because then it will look legit, which I did. So we exported, my first shipment was to the Museum of Natural history in San Francisco. With the rutilated quartz and various things. So that was, I don't know, that's just how it all started back in the 80s.

00:11:08: Laurent And then, I mean, over the last few years, minerals and mineral collecting has really taken off. There's always been a lot of rockhounds, but it feels like mineral prices have just gone through the roof. Correct. How have you seen that kind of evolve over the past 40 years? Because you were working with minerals, with specimens, then gems. I think you also were doing a bit of cutting. Yes. How did you find kind of your path?

00:11:32: Brian Well, my path is a combination of all the above. So as opportunities arise, the mineral market has always been my passion. I love crystals. I love the science of the crystals and the sort of the magic and power of it. Not really so much the esoteric fluff. I leave that to others. I have my own feelings about crystals and such. But as you mentioned, the value of minerals has spiked and accelerated rapidly because more and more people are becoming fascinated by the beauty and the science of crystallography and crystals. And the more rare and beautiful, they become highly collectible. And so in recent years, more and people of wealth have found them as another quote investment and we've just seen the price of fine minerals accelerate.

00:12:29: Laurent But what's so interesting about rutilated quartz is that every specimen is different. So are they mineral specimens? Are they gems? Should they be used in jewellery? It's, it's interesting compared to like just emeralds, faceted emeralds, where, you know, you can buy six by four or five by seven or, or whatever. Where does rutilated quartz fit in all this? And you are kind of Mr. rutilated quartz.

00:12:50: Brian Yeah, rutilated quartz is one of those exotic minerals, exotic quartz that has a lot of impact visually, there's a lot beauty that some of the great gem carvers, Munsteiner in particular, was immediately attracted to working with those stones, that the potential to do creative cutting, quartzes and especially rutliated quartzes fit that bill. And it still does to this day. I mean, I began cutting stones around 19, well, in the mid-80s also, because I took a course in optical mineralogy and I was instructed on how to create thin sections. That was in junior college. And then my friend had a workshop in his studio, we're talking Bodega, California, and we used to spend evenings out there. Rainy nights, you know, working on the wheels. And that's where I started my cutting. And then I've been cutting since then. But rutilated quartz is definitely, it's, to me, it's always been undervalued. It's one of the exotic, beautiful stones. You know, you take a fine amethyst that's not synthetic, let's talk about real amethyst. And the price is, you now, three, four, five times that. Of fine, rutliated quartz. But fine, rutilated quartz is even harder to come by. And it's spectacular. But anyway, I have a lot of faith and personal connection with the community there because I've been working with them for decades. We've helped with the process of formalising, creating miners cooperatives, and now with my current initiative to try and give back to that community by helping create. Enterprise, value added things and such. So it's part of my life. I have four decades there now.

00:14:54: Laurent So you can really see the evolution of that or how gems can also contribute to livelihoods or to economic development on the ground. You have 40 years of experience with this community, right?

00:15:04: Brian Yeah, well that's it. I mean, in the colour gemstone world, as we know, most, you know, up to 80% is mined by small scale and artisanal miners scattered all around the planet. So the opportunity for those communities to benefit from those resources is great. I would say that the producers and the miners in those communities, we know that they're on the bottom end of. The value chain and my hope is that as our industry evolves with an eye towards quote sustainability responsible sourcing with the idea of how do these stones benefit is there any harm etc as that knowledge increases and real knowledge not just talk but actual proof sound stories Just as our industry becomes more and more attracted to that, with the help of the youth, younger generation, emerging designers, etc., we'll naturally head in that direction, even if it's very slow, but it's happening. And I think artisanal mining communities can play a vital role in creating the that our industry is wanting and clamouring for. So a colour gemstone and mineral has great potential to add credibility to our product, add relevance and value through this.

00:16:45: Laurent Yeah. And every gem or every locality has a unique story. And that's what's so wonderful about gems. Another gem that you're very familiar with is Paraiba tourmaline. Can you talk to us about your connection to Paraiba, how it all started?

00:17:00: Brian Yeah. Paraiba was very special for me. I was going back to my university days while I was finishing up the university. Since I had been making trips to Brazil and such, an opportunity came up to be part of Grassroots Exploration Company and help start it. So my last year in university, I was offered a position to be a joint managing director to create a gold exploration company. In Brazil. And it was my brother was involved, and some Australian investors were involved. And my mentor in Brazil, the geologist who had already discovered a gold mine for the state of Bahia, he was involved. So we had a very tight unit, and I picked up the kids, we moved to Brazil, and started doing exploration. And we decided to focus on Northeast Brazil. Because we're on kind of a shoestring budget. We didn't have huge funding. And the geology of Northeast Brazil is ripe for exploration. It's easier to explore there than in jungles. Very difficult and expensive. And there was a big rush of everyone looking in the Amazon and such for gold. Because it's much more arid, or it's dry, there's less vegetation? Northeast Brazil has a dry season and a wet season. It's very arid. In fact, it reminds me much of the Sonoran Desert, Tucson. You have the dry season, and then you have monsoon season. So in the dry seasons, the rocks are very visible. There's not big jungles. So the geology is easier to handle there. And we had some leads and we did some projects with the Rio Grande do Norte state mining company. They had some claims and we joint ventured. We staked claims, large tracts of area over greenstone belt, you know, all unexplored. So we were doing grassroots and we set up an office there and we had a crew. And so I was working in that area, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco. And I became very fascinated and very distracted by all the pegmatite minerals. Because again, remember I'm into crystals and aquas and all that stuff. So while I'm up there, I'm making all these connections and visiting pegmatites and occasionally buying an aquamarine or euclase or manganotanolite, which I love, and one of the heavy metals, you know? And it was during that time. This was which year? Okay, we started the company in 1987. So this is 87, 88, 89. So while that's all happening, there was an economic crash globally and the people that were funding our operation, they had operations in Central America, Europe, they had all this, they were spread thin. So all of a sudden they pulled the plug. They said, we have to shut down. And so I was like, I had just moved my family up to. He was going on to march and we were just, everything, it was, it was a whole change, instant change. And it was during that time that I told my wife, I said, you know what, you haven't been to the interior, let's go on a aquamarine search. Let's go visit the remote mine sites and see what we come up with. And it's during that tooling around, when I visited one of my contacts in Rio Grande do Norte, Parelhas, which is on the frontier of Paraíba, I said, hey, do you have any aquamarine? And he said, yeah, I got aquamarines. He pulls out a bag of aquamarine. And he says, but wait, wait, wait, you gotta see this. And so he puts a plate, dinner plate, you know, white dinner plate. And he dumps out these vivid, bright, richly saturated blue and green stones. And everything in between. And I'm going, whoa, what is that? You know, I go, that doesn't look real. But of course it was real because, you know, I'm in the middle of nowhere. And I go home, geez. And it was just recently found, the first big hit. This is 1988. And I asked the guy, I said, well, what's going on? Who found this? What's going? And he said, well, a tour. And I said, where is that? He said, over in Junco. And I ended up tracking down Heitor, but the impression of those stones, they filled my mind for months on end. Literally what happened after my wife and I saw that plate and we drove away from there. We couldn't get the colour out of our mind and literally, I don't understand this to this day, but I would close my eyes and those colours, as if it was liquid, just like fill my whole brain. And just those colours were almost, so my theory is is that my eyes had never seen that colour at that frequency. I mean, we see those beautiful colours in the sea and copper stones and this and that and the other, but coming from a gem crystal, those colours, that was new. My brain had never perceived that, so it must have catalysed something. So I was really affected. I was like obsessed with it. So you caught the fever. It was more than a fever. I was flooded with. Yeah. I tracked down Heitor. I went, I found him at his, he was in this little house in Junco and I knocked on his door and he opens it and he's a little short guy with intense eyes and I, and imagine a tall gringo. There's nobody, there's no gringos up there. And in fact in those days there was no Brazilian gem dealers from Minas going there. It was so remote, so rugged. That anything found in that part of the world had to find its way to (Governador) Valadares and Teófilo Otoni. So everything was taken there. Nobody from there bothered to go up there. It's like, why go there? It's rugged, it's wild west. So I try him down. I go, Heitor, do you have any stones for sale? And he looks at me and he goes, no, shakes his head. I noticed, like, sitting on the bed is a shotgun. Right, just laying on his bed. And for some reason we connected at that moment and he invites me in and he starts telling me what's happening at his mind. And it turns out that at that moment he had just returned from his home in Minas Gerais. He would go home every Christmas to be with his family. In that particular year, when he returned... While he was away, his miners hit the first zone of actual cuprian, tourmaline production. There were hints of it previously, barely, because he had already been there seven years, digging, him and his crew. And when they hit and he was a way, they sold a lot of it to the locals. That's how I saw that plate. So the local aggregators. Had some, and a very powerful family had also found some and taken it to Teófilo Otoni. And in Teófilo Otoni, basically, without naming anything, they said, well, yeah, go get the mine. So when, when Heitor came back, there was a bunch of guys sitting at his mine with guns and they said this isn't your mine. And that's when I met Heitor. And he told me the story. And I asked him, I said, did you state claims? Since I knew the process was very detailed. And he said, yeah. And I said can I see your paperwork? And I looked at it and it looked good. And I don't know, I just said, I'm gonna help you. And so it was after that trip, this is 1988, and so I return to the states. I go to GIA in Santa Monica where I had a relationship already with Dr. Shigley and anyway so because I used to show up with rutile and unusual things. So I show up and I pull out of my pocket a couple crystals, some stones and I throw it on the table and it's vivid you know turquoise electric stones and him and Emmanuel Fritsch was there at the time. Really like flipped out. And they said, Oh, quick, get Alice in here, calling Alice Keller (past editor of Gems & Gemology). And they're all well, we need to get this published, you know, and Alice said, Well, the summer edition, it's almost ready to go out, but we can squeeze in something. So that's the very first publication of the discovery is in G&G. Just a very short mention. And I that's where I told what was happening in the story. So did people on the ground realised that it was something new.

00:26:56: Laurent The people at the site. Yes, that it wasn't an aqua or a beryl, but it was tourmaline.

00:27:01: Brian They knew it was tourmaline and the colours were exciting, but even in Brazil, those first stones that spread and went to Minas Gerais, even then, the people that were receiving them, they're saying, no, this is fake, there's something wrong here. So there was still that question. So who started heating stones to improve the colour, change the colour? That happened later. Once the stones got into Brazilian dealers and those Brazilian dealers brought it to Germany, et cetera, then it just became like fire. It's like, who has it? How do we get it? And then it showed up in Tucson 1990, was the first year that it appeared on the global stage in any quantity. And there was scattered around different dealers in Tucson, Brazilians, et cetera. And it was the talk of the town, because, have you seen this? And, I don't know. And they're like, yeah. And people are going, no, it's fake. And others are going yeah, but no, it's not fake. So people started buying it, and it was selling for way beyond what tourmaline had ever sold for. Like, you know, we're talking 200 a carat, 250 a carat. But people are still buying it. And then... What was truly amazing was that the next day, the price had gone up, 350, 450. And then in a matter of six days, the stones that had originally traded at 250 were now 2,500 a carat. So nothing like that had ever happened with a stone that fast. So the story was that, and they were going, where's this from? Paraíba. So, that's how it became parayuba tourmaline. Also, that very same show, the description, neon and electric was also attached. So have you seen that neon tourmaline, that electric tourmaline? So electric, neon, and Paraíba came to that stone at that time.

00:29:14: Laurent And the prices now, 36 years later, are absolutely insane. In these 36 years, was there ever a dip where people felt like, oof, what are we paying such high prices for?

00:29:24: Brian That's the other thing. This stone has never gone down in value. Over those 36 years, the price has only increased. Anybody that's owned one of those stones, at any point to this day, it's worth more.

00:29:38: Laurent And they've all got FOMO that they sold their stones.

00:29:41: Brian Yeah, I have. I have major FOMO.

00:29:46: Laurent So what do you think it is about Paraíba? Is it coming back to the reaction that you were describing before about just this wow effect, my brain has never seen this? Or why is the market, why are people so crazy about it?

00:29:59: Brian Because it's a colour that most generally around the world, people love that colour. I mean, think the crystal ocean water from the shallowest shore, where it's that green, minty green and gradual to the depth of the indigo blue. All those colours occurred from the original mine. And in fact, all those colours occur naturally. But there was also, of course, a lot of stones that had more manganese, and those stones became heatable. So the truth is, is not all the stones are heated. Now, in Mozambique, most stones are heated.

00:30:40: Laurent And could you explain for our listeners who are not very familiar with what heating is or the process, what, what it does or what it just, why people do it?

00:30:48: Brian Yeah, I mean, you heat stones to improve the colour. Now, when you have the element manganese colouring a stone, it's usually orange or red. And when you having copper colouring a stone, it's mostly green, blue, turquoise, and everything in between. And so the combination of green and red creates grey, or turquoise and red. You know, it creates a darker tone. Or a grayer tone, and so those stones, it was discovered that people are always experimenting, so immediately they could see that some of those stones that didn't look so great heated, the manganese is reduced chemically, it changes its state, and eliminates the red part of the colour, and copper is not affected by the heating, so what remains is the blue or turquoise or green of that stone. So some stones are heated and others not. But I've literally seen every combination of colour from Batalha mine, which is the original type locality. I've seen every colour possible natural. So it's just remarkable.

00:32:02: Laurent And what does the mining situation look like today? Or the supply situation for Paraiba tourmaline?

00:32:08: Brian After the initial discovery and production in 1988, 89, 90, 91, 92, once the stone hit the global market and there was a fever about it, then the battle at the source began because Heitor and then the other teams that developed, it created a lot of tension and a lot danger and a lot of jockeying for who owns what. And it was very tense for years, even dangerous. We mentioned about danger. So valuable stones attract that. Even though for me, the stone represented magic and beauty and power in a different sense, but value attracts the opposite too. We see that.

00:32:59: Laurent So were you spending much time down there given that you had that relationship with him?

00:33:03: Brian Yeah, I've been involved in that mine ever since that connection, at least once or twice a year in the mine, visiting the mine. I mapped it in 1991. I was the first person to ever map it. I presented at the GIA symposium in 1991, I was asked to present a poster session on Paraiba tourmaline. And I was young, I mean, I was new, I was still relatively young in the industry, but that connection with Paraiba gave me a lot of cred and experience, even at the symposium. I mean that was fantastic. My neighbour next to me, because the poster session was not just a poster on a wall, it was like a whole booth. And so next to was Campbell Bridges with Tsavorite. And then there was me with Paraibo, And then on my left was the. New find of ruby from Vietnam. So we had green blue red, it was really... All the pioneers were... Yeah, it really was amazing. That was spectacular. So, in 1991, the next discovery of cuprian tourmaline, which happened about 60 kilometres northeast of the original find, in Parelhas, all of a sudden, some garimperos discovered... Copper tourmaline there. Now, there is differences in the look between the two and you can notice it, but there existed a Feldspar mine there, which the state mining company operated. And I had been in that, I'd visited that deposit in my work up there when we were doing the exploration. So when that was discovered, then here's the second discovery and those goods became mixed and coincidentally at the same time, Some vivid blue apatite was discovered in Paraíba, and of course those stones began to get mixed in the rough too, which fooled some people for a little bit. And they must have lost some money. Yeah, there was a story about some Germans that took a big hit on that, but deep blue that looked like the top colour from Batalha, but that soon got sorted out. Then, I think it was around 1994 to five, the third cuprian tourmaline find happened between those two mines. And that was Ranieri Addario was working there, looking through aqua and going down, going down. All of a sudden, boom, there was cuprian termaline in the walls. And I remember climbing down into that with Ranieri. And going into this big chamber, and on the wall were like tourmaline evolving from, you know, deep green into the turquoise, spreading into the wall rocks. And that later mine was operated by Hans Werner (Wild) family, the Paul Wild company. And they indeed developed a super mine there and produced a lot of great stones. So there's the three sources in Brazil.

00:36:19: Laurent And then later on, there were discoveries in Mozambique and Nigeria.

00:36:23: Brian Yeah, that happened later, like 2000 or whenever. Yeah. Did you ever travel there? No, I haven't visited those. So you have the three spots in Brazil. And of the three, only one produces today. And that is the one in Rio Grande do Norte. Today, it's marketed as Brazil Paraíba tourmaline. And that's a beautiful operation. It's a really well run, very well organised. Very supportive of the community, all local workers, all in-house cutting. It's a really super operation. I would compare it with the Belmont operation as far as quality of operation. Not quite as big as Belmont, but nonetheless, very good operation. And that's the only producing part of Paraiba tourmaline in Brazil right now. And the battle that happened around the original discovery lasted decades, and it's still not sorted out. I believe that that line has not been fully explored.

00:37:23: Laurent So do you think that that lack in supply because of these battles and kind of competition there also meant that prices could go so high because there just wasn't that much supply on the market?

00:37:34: Brian I guess so. Again, it gets back to beauty and rarity, and it's a really beautiful stone, and it is hard to get. Thus, collectors and jewellery collectors will pay. If you have deep pockets, you'll pay for a super rare stone. For example, there is a pezzottaite, which is another vivid coloured stone, very small supply. But it didn't have enough supply to create any kind of demand, yet it's more rare. And it's another colour that's vivid and fantastic and has that energy of neon glowing.

00:38:14: Laurent Well, that's what's so fascinating is that some stones take off and others do so less for a variety of reasons. So you were going down this Paraíba tourmaline rabbit hole, but on the side, were you still working with emeralds, rutliated quartz or...? Sure.

00:38:28: Brian Yeah, I've always been connected with rutile quartz and eventually I was the first person in the region to stake a claim. That took me 10-year process because I wasn't going to bribe anyone. I wanted, you know, it's like, no, let's do this. I have connections, you known, with the government, et cetera. Even with connections, it was still difficult. But once I've sorted out how to stake claim in that region using an obscure law in the mining books. That people didn't even know, but it's a law that allows garimpeiros a simplified version to state claims. Once I did that, I was able to show the other landowners and locals how to do that. So today we have quite extensive areas that are formalised for rutliated quartz. So I'm still connected there.

00:39:17: Laurent And as a geologist, you observe this new discovery of Paraiba tourmaline. Do you think that there are yet more new discoveries that will come from Brazil or from other localities of gems that we don't know yet? I would think so.

00:39:29: Brian You know, leave it to the garimpeiros, the adventurers that risk their money, risk their life in exploration because they're passionate, they're somewhat crazy. It's these people that run into things, or it could be as simple as an armadillo might kick out a stone. That's how Socotó was discovered. The emeralds was like, oh, whoa, there's a green stone on this pile of dirt. And, you know, so these discoveries happen. And I think they will continue. But discoveries like Paraíba or pezzottaite or something completely new but valuable, those are the real charm. That's the real mystery. And no one can predict when or if that will ever happen.

00:40:17: Laurent Never going to get boring.

00:40:18: Brian No, it's not boring.

00:40:20: Laurent Thank you so much for this conversation, Brian.

00:40:22: Brian Oh, yeah, right. And listen, next time, we'll continue the conversation. I'm sure there's more, but let's do it in Farayevah.

00:40:28: Laurent We'll do it in Paraiba, boots on the ground.

00:40:31: Brian Yeah, you're invited.

00:40:35: Laurent Our guest was Brian Cook, on discovery, obsession and the colour of tourmaline that flooded his mind and never quite left. That was another Hidden Gem by SSEF, the Swiss Gemmological Institute. Thank you for listening.