Awards and Press

I’m proud that our work has received wide recognition in just a few years.  Below are some of the awards we have won, as well as press and museum exhibits of our gems.

Awards

We don’t enter many competitions, but occasionally some of our gems are entered by the owners or by us when we feel they are truly exceptional.  As of 2022, four of our gems have won the prestigious Spectrum Cutting Edge Awards from the American Gem Trade Association.  The first was large, rare, and very fine apatite, which won first place in 2016.

My award-winning 42.47-carat Mexican apatite, faceted in my custom “Aurora” square cushion design. This gem won the first place award in the 2016 AGTA Spectrum Awards in the “All Other Faceted” category. Apatite this clean and large is extremely rare.  This gem is now in the “Somewhere in the Rainbow” collection. Photo courtesy of the AGTA Spectrum Awards.

In  2020 AGTA created a new category for American Gemstones.  Unknown to us, the Somewhere in the Rainbow collection entered a matched pair of Montana Sapphires cut in our “Helena” brilliant oval design.  This design has become something of a trademark for our business.  This particular pair of sapphires is the largest matched set we have been able to mine and cut in the last 6 years.  They won third place in this new category:

 

In 2022, two exceptional Montana sapphires cut by Jeff were entered in “American Gemstones” category of the AGTA Spectrum Cutting Edge Awards and the took both 2nd and 3rd place.

An 11.50-carat faceted amethyst and a natural crystal from Jackson’s Crossroads, Georgia.
Museum Exhibits

A number of my gems are in museum collections or private collections that are occasionally exhibited in museums.  I have had my gemstones exhibited in the Gem Vault at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, the Tellus Museum in Georgia, the Perot Museum in Texas and the University of Arizona Museum.  The Georgia amethyst featured in the image below is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.


Press Mentions and Publications

My gems and some of my own photographs have been featured in several publications to date including the GIA’s “Gems & Gemology,” Gemworld International’s “GemGuide” and the Fourth Edition of Antoinette Matlin’s Colored Gemstones Buying Guide to name just a few.

As one of the leading global experts on Montana Sapphires, our founder Jeff Hapeman recently co-authored a research paper on these gems with two GIA scientists and the retired state geologist of Montana.  You can read it here:

https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/spring-2023-characterization-montana-sapphire

At the annual Tucson Gem Show in 2019, our founder Jeff Hapeman was one of select group of gemstone artists interviewed by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA):

https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/spring-21-gemnews-jeff-hapeman-earths-treasury

In the spring of 2021, the Gemological Institute of America’s Winter 2020 Edition of their “Gems & Gemology” journal was published and I was honored that they had chosen some of our Madagascar sapphires for the cover image:

Our founder Jeff Hapeman was interviewed for the Spring 2021 issue of Gems & Gemology:

https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/spring-21-gemnews-jeff-hapeman-earths-treasury