"This stone she cut in what is called the buff top."

Jim Lamerson, owner of Lamerson's Jewelry, picked up a small white box, and removed the see-through lid. "Anne designed this stone to maximize the sparkle," he said, showing off the large tourmaline stone inside.

You've probably heard and read about Lamerson because of his role as a Prescott City Councilman. But, there's another side of Lamerson, and it can be found in his shop on Cortez Street.

Lamerson's wife, Anne, is a gem-cutter known the world over for her skill and precision. According to Lamerson, it's frequently a challenge to balance beauty and rarity, but it's what Anne is really, really good at.

"It's not uncommon to find big tourmaline crystals, but it is uncommon to find big tourmaline crystals clean," Lamerson explained as he picked up the stone itself. "When you find a piece that can yield a gemstone that's this big, that's flawless, you don't want to waste it, what you want to do is maximize what you can to get the beauty out of it. So while the center of this stone may appear mundane, she can maximize the beauty by cutting it for sparkle around the perimeter. To maximize the beauty in the center, she would have had to sacrifice the size. So, what she did was to keep the rarity of the size- remember, this particular stone is over 70 carats. So, if she were to try to maximize the entire stone to get the brilliance out of the whole piece, the stone would have dropped down to maybe a 40 carat stone. So, that's kind of a neat stone."

Lamerson gestured to the stack of white boxes in front of him. "Everyone of these is done for a particular reason."

He picked up another stone, "Now, you see the center? It's another stone that she did to maximize the size, and show the depth; this stone she cut in what is called the buff top. She only faceted the bottom of the stone. Now, different from this, this stone almost swallows you into it, you almost want to follow into the stone. Look at how you fall into the stone, it creates a big vacuum. Do you see what I'm saying, when I say it that way? Here again, it's a flawless piece, and you want to crawl into the stone."

Finding the Right Stones

So, where do the Lamersons go to find these rare and special stones? Lamerson answered, "We go to shows, and shows come to us. We're sought out by different gem marketers."

Any shortcuts? Do the stones arrive partially cut, or does Anne start with the rough stone at the beginning? "No, she cuts them rough," Lamerson said.

And he means really rough. Sometimes it's literally from the ground up. "Sometimes we'll go to the mines. I've gone to the mines and dealt with the miners, and bought what's called 'mine run' and then we'll tumble it, and go that route, or we'll buy kilos of rough, especially like with amesthyst, and sort through that... Depends, depends on what the material is you're dealing with."

Then Lamerson paused, "I've only gone to mines within this country. I do have friends of mines that have gone to mines, in different countries. A friend of ours used to own several mines in Oregon, Idaho, North Carolina, here in Arizona, we've gone down to San Carlos..."

Is it possible that someone could find some of these stones in the raw form, and not know what they were looking at? "That's a fair statement," Lamerson nodded. "Because you don't know what you're looking for."

Quite a Production

Do they do any mass production of the stones? Are the stones they use always handcut? Lamerson nodded. "We use machines, but it's all hand done. We do onesies, we don't do four, five, ten, fifty. There are people who do mass production, that's not us. Each one of these is an individual."

How long does it take to cut a stone? "It varies. It depends on the size of the stone, depends on the material, depends on the complexity of the design that she's doing. She had one stone one time that took her over three and a half days, maybe two and a half, three hours a day, just to polish the table - that's the flat part on top. And now it's a over 70 carat topaz which is a very, very arduous stone to do. She has cut some pretty significant pieces," Lamerson said with obvious pride in his wife's accomplishments.

Lamerson described some of Anne's other work, "And then there's other stones that you cut, that by their nature and value, that every little niche and cranny that you work with on it, you take time to look. She did slightly over 2k Alexandria at one time, that had been broken in the process of setting it, that she had to repair for somebody. And the stone was worth a lot of money, and you take a stone that's worth a hundred thousand dollars, every time you lose 1/100th of a carat, and it's worth $50,000 per carat, how much money have you lost. So, she was paid a lot of money to keep the stone at over 2 carats. Because as a 2 carat stone, it's worth more per carat than it is as a 1.90. So, these are some of the things that you have to take into consideration when you work on some of this stuff."

"One of the stones she cut was a fairly large, over 10 carat cashmere sapphire, which was a very significant piece that was being marketed back on the east coast. That was a significant stone to be handled. She shaped the Ponderosa Queen, a named stone, which was a significant stone, and it was broken by a very reputable jeweler in the east, and it was sent to her to fix. She repaired the damage and she kept the stone in a very, very respectable size. And that's what people get paid to do. That's what we do - that's what she does."

The stones are massive. Lamerson explained that most of them would typically be set into a necklace or a bracelet.

He Couldn't Be A Soldier

So, how did he get started in the jewelry business, anyway? Lamerson looked thoughtful, "It was an accident. I don't know that I've ever gotten to share how I got started in the jewelry business. I was looking for a job, and it was a timeframe in history, when Vietnam was raging and I couldn't be a soldier. The whole family are soldiers, I was not medically qualified, I was declared 4F. Anyway, I went out looking for jobs, knocking on doors, I started in the phone book, and I went from A to B to C, and finally I got to a place, I got to L, and it was Lippa's Jewelry Store, and the reason the man offered me a job in the basement stocking shelves was because I was not militarily qualified and he didn't want to waste time training me on how to be a stock clerk and have me drafted and wasted his time. That's how I effectively got started in the jewelry business."

"One thing led to another, and within several months, I was not a stock clerk anymore, I was doing something different in the store," Lamerson explained. "and under the Rockefeller administration, I was put into an OJT program for jewelry store management. I got scholarships through the jeweler's board of trade, and the Gemological Institute of America, and I did this, this and this, and I've been in the trade for 36 years."

"We moved out to Arizona in 1979, and Anne was tired of being a federal government worker, and decided to get involved in gem cutting and she's been doing that since that timeframe. Anne is very artistic, she's always been very artistic, she was very artistic with lines and with drawing, and with rockwork, she does some amazing designs in the garden. It's one of those things. It's kind of a family tradition now - April's getting involved in the business."

(April, one of the friendly people you might see in Lamerson's Jewlery, is their daughter, and she's taking courses with the Gemological Institute herself, having graduated from high school a couple of years ago.)

Was it upsetting to have his career plans turned upside down? "Upset isn't the right word, disappointed is the right word," Lamerson corrected. "Anne's dad was a retired Marine, and that's all they knew - she and her sister. Her sister married a career military man, my brother-in-law was Navy well over 20 years, and I would have been career military - that's all we know. I was prepared to do my duty, I just couldn't do it. So, I'm in career jewelry."

Lamerson shrugged "For every door that closes, another one opens. One of the things you learn as a military child, in my most humble opinion, is to be flexible. Every day is a new challenge. You just have to accept the way it is, and the way it was, was that whether it was the Navy, or whether it was the Air Force, or whether it was eventually the Army, I wasn't going to be a soldier. And that's just the way it worked out."

"So, I became a jeweler, I didn't choose that either, it chose me," he said with a chuckle. "What would have happened if the first guy happened to be a clothier - maybe I would have been over there peddling Pendletons. I don't know, that's not the way it happened."

Romancing the Stones

Lamerson picked up another stone and said, "Her turn has come, it's her turn to start saying, 'you know, I've been doing this a long time.' We're celebrating our 17th year in this location, here she's been cutting gems since 1981, 82. So, we're highlighting some of the stones she's cut over the last few years that were significant. One of them is that 42 carat tri-color tourmaline that's flawless, I mean, that's a very unusual stone."

"It's not unusual just because of its size, just by the nature of its crystal, you can see that bi-color, multi-color tourmaline is not unusual," he explained. "But what is unusual but what is unusual is to get one that's that significant in size that has no inclusions to the eye. That's a significant stone to get something of that size that's flawless. Doesn't mean that it's impossible, just means that it's not very common."

He picked up another stone. It was obvious that he loved these beautiful stones. "So, like this blue one, to get a blue tourmaline this big, this beautiful, this clean - 46 carats, I mean, that's a remarkable stone."

He chose a blue stone next. "You really want to see something? This one here's an aqua. Blue as the water in the well of your soul. Isn't that something? And, here's a scapolite, watch this light work up and down that stone."

"Kind of neat, huh," Lamerson asked softly.

"I've been doing the jewelry trade now for well over 36 years," Lamerson confessed, "and I still haven't lost the lust of seeing some of nature's beauty in its finest and appreciating the talent of people who can bring it out."

It's A Special Celebration

Lamerson's Jewelry and Lapidary is located in a former bank, right next to the old Masonic Temple in downtown Prescott on Cortez Street.

The minute you enter, you feel as if you're in a timewarp. It's a relaxed and comfortable shop, not fancy at all. A little cluttered, perhaps. And the people behind the cases are cheerful and friendly and helpful, and give no sense of urgency. As a matter of fact, a lot of people stop in just to chat with Lamerson about politics or to get his opinion about something, or even just to say hi. It's a great location for that. Lamerson's Jewelry has been there for 17 years now.

So, why not a celebration? Well, that's just what they intend to do - in their own way, of course.

"We are highlighting my wife's cutting career with some very special stones that we are featuring that she's done over the years. It's one of those things - you do things and you collect things, and you highlight things, and we thought it's her turn in the sun, and we're highlighting some of the things she's done," Lamerson said. "I've been in the newspaper and on the tv and on the radio and highlighted over the years. So, people can come and see some of the stones that we have here that she has cut. That was the idea.This year's 17th Anniversary, we're featuring some of her stones."

Editor's Note: You can see the stones yourself. Lamerson's Jewelry and Lapidary is at 105 N. Cortez Street, Prescott.

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