The
white gold quartz of California is mainly supplied from the following
counties: Butte, Calaveras, El Dorado, Mariposa, Nevada, Placer,
Sierra, Tuolumne, and Yuba.
The
black gold quartz, a quite recent novelty, is found at the Sheep Eanch
mine, Calaveras county, and at Sutter creek, Amador county. California.
The
so-called rose gold quartz is made by backing a translucent quartz with
the desired shade of carmine paste, and forms an effective contrast to
the opaque white and black gold quartz with which it is usually mounted
in some design.
Single
stones for scarf pins, rings, and sets of pin and earrings, sell from
$2 to $10 each, and occasionally exceptionally fine or curious pieces
bring higher prices.
It
is not many years since gold quartz has been utilized to any great
extent in jewelry. At first the designs were usually simple and the
mountings very modest, but the demand has created a supply of the most
elaborate designs, and at present it is used in every conceivable form
of jewelry, and in articles of personal or house adornment of almost
unlimited variety, such as canes, paper weights, writing cases, perfume
bottles, fan sticks, bracelets, watch chains, and lace pins, the latter
in such designs as shovels, picks, and other mining emblems.
In
certain kinds of furniture it is used as paneling; and here, as in the
jewelry, the effect is better brought out by added colors, such as are
afforded by agate, moss agate, silver rock, smoky quartz, pyrite,
chal-copyrite, cinnabar, malachite, turquois in the matrix, and other
bright minerals.
Much
of the jewelry made of this material is sold to tourists from the
eastern States and from other countries. Eleven hundred dollars' worth
was recently purchased by an Asiatic embassy, and scarcely any one
visiting California fails to purchase a memento. The sale is increasing.
The
best taste as a rule is not exercised in the designs. Many are too
large and ungainly for personal adornment, and many others are not as
well mounted as most of the other jewelry sold with them. Perhaps not
one article in ten sold will have much if any wear. There is much room
for improvement in the line of this work.
One
of the large designs made of gold quartz, representing the cathedral
of Notre Dame, at Paris, is valued at $20,000. It stands about 12
inches high, and is perhaps the finest piece of gold quartz work
produced.
A
mass of gold quartz(a) weighing 160 pounds was hydraulicked out of the
bank of the Nevada Hydraulic Company at Gibsonville. The bowlder was
smoothly washed and had the appearance of having been ground in a
pothole. Its estimated value was $2,500, but its real worth was more,
since it was valuable for lapidaries' purposes.
