Project: World's Largest Crystals and Gemstones

Although the pandemic left me at home for much of the year, I haven't posted much throughout this year. But, I have recently been working on two ongoing projects that I've added to the blog and are accessible at the top of the home page via the new "Projects" link. These are the World's Largest Crystals and the World's Largest Gemstones. Two databases of the largest known crystals and gems. 

I've long been wanting to work on an update to Peter Rickwood's 1981 publication, The Largest Crystals, in which Rickwood painstakingly compiles information about the world's largest known crystals using sources such as eyewitness testimonies and 19th century publications. The introduction to Rickwood's paper is a great starting point to understand what the largest crystals are, how we can define them, and what complications can arise in determining them as the largest. Most of the minerals that he describes are included in the World's Largest Crystals project, as well as his descriptions of them.  

While a printed publication such as Rickwood's paper is great, there are limitations, such as the quality and number of photographs, and the arrangement of the information. So, I've made an HTML-based layout that is easier to search for minerals alphabetically using collapsable HTML tables that contain a description of each mineral and any number of photographs. 

While researching the largest crystals, I kept stumbling onto some of the largest gem quality crystals and minerals. So, I decided to keep that information as well, which spurred the second project: the World's Largest Gemstones. This uses the same layout and principles as the first, but is exclusively for crystals that have been polished, cut, and/or faceted. However, a complication with gemstones is that there are record-holding gemstones that are varieties of a certain mineral, such as corundum. Ruby and sapphire are both varieties of corundum, but rubies are generally pink to red and sapphires are generally blue. But, there are some reports of the largest pink ruby and the largest faceted ruby and the largest ruby with asterism (aka star ruby). It can get very messy, but I've been including many of these, at least for the time being.

These projects are ongoing and far from complete. Do not take them as being definitive just yet as I will be continuously editing these pages. But, I've got them to a point that I want to make them public for your enjoyment and, most importantly, this project can become definitive by crowd sourcing information. If you would like to contribute, please contact me!