The Starburst Stone Journey

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My name is John Bennett and I first saw Victoria Stone for sale at Cloud's Gemboree in Quartzsite AZ, in January 1994.  It fascinated me.  Its bright colors, its amazing chatoyancy, the way the color jumped around, coming and going, depending on how the light hits the cabochon.  I bought some slices and had a green stone cut and set as a bolo.  I still wear it today in 2017.  Its moving beauty fascinated me and I wanted to see more.  But I was told it was no longer being made.  So I put recreating it on my bucket list.  I toyed with working on a recreation back in 2001 and 2002. I contacted Artur Birkner, who I knew was a chemist and a geologist - and who had developed a process to grow emerald crystals hydrothermally - he called his creation BIRON EMERALD - back in around 1990.  I contacted Artur but he was busy floating a public company and said he simply didn't have the time.  There the project rested until I returned to live in Western Australia in July 2012.  By that time Artur had retired [more or less] and agreed to help me to try to recreate this very colorful, chatoyant and attractive, man-made, stone-like glass.  Trials and tribulations aplenty we slowly [and how] worked to overcome the challenges to make Starburst Stone as a [yet another] Victoria Stone recreation.  It’s not the same, it’s NOT Victoria Stone, but we believe it is a very reasonable recreation.  And to that extent we are satisfied with Starburst Stone as a recreation of VICTORIA STONE.  So there you have the motivation and a summary of the journey.   And now we are pleased to be able to offer you STARBURST STONE and hope you enjoy working with it.  It is available as rough unworked material - as whole or part boules, as sawn slices and as finished cabochons.