28 June 2011

The yearly fossil, mineral and gem fair, held in the pittoresque, French, mining town of Sainte Marie aux Mines has just come to an end. The show featured over 900 sellers and although it appeared to have drawn fewer visitors than other years it entertained those who did visit for the four days it ran. The show is only accessible to trade members on the Thursday and Friday allowing them first dibs on the goodies, often at reduced prices before the general public swarms over the stalls decked out with fossils, meteorites, mineral specimens and cut stones of all imaginable qualities and prices.

The show has two areas, the larger of which is called Euromineral which is reserved for the fossil and mineral section. From an awesome sabertooth skull and huge meteorite slab to the finest museum quality specimens of just about every mineral variety this section would make any natural history museum curator phone home to check what his budget is. The most valuable specimens are concentrated in the town's theater where the elite of the mineral vendors display the crème de la crème of natures finest. It was a true feast for the eye. The combined collection of these sellers rivals that of what can be seen in the larger Museums of London or New York in beauty, diversity and abundance. Although the organization tries to keep gems and minerals separate many dealers at the mineral section sold cut gems and a bit of rough.

The gem section, called Eurogem, houses some 200 sellers who offer a wide variety of loose gemstones, a little rough and some bijoux. It wasn't as busy here and quite a few bored faces were to be found on the other side of the tables. This suited the interested gemologist just fine as he had all the time to eyeball each and every stone at his leisure. Long and in depth talks with some of the more experienced and knowledgeable vendors were another bonus made possible by the lack of large amounts of visitors.

Sainte Marie aux what Mines?

As its name suggests, the town owes its existence in some extent to mining activities. When silver mining started isn't completely clear, some believe it commenced as early as the Gallo-Roman era, others date the discovery of the deposits to Ottonian times. A fact is that the height of the production was in the period 1530-1570 when 2000-3000 miners were involved in extracting the precious lead-silver, copper, arsenic, zinc, nickel and iron ores from mines around the valley.

Large quantities of silver were mined in the area until the end of the 16th century when yields diminished while enormous amounts of South American silver was imported into Europe by the Spanish. Sainte Marie aux Mines became a ghost town, just a handful of farmers remained to occupy the area, benefiting from the large areas that were cleared of vegetation in order to retrieve enough wood to prop the shafts, tunnels and fuel the fires that were necessary to separate the different metals from their ore. If you want to read more on silver metallurgy we recommend this article.

In 1962, when François Lehmann organized a “Mine Day” on behalf of the technical Cinema club, it was simply a local exhibition. Two years later, the exhibition, then entitled “Stones,” had progressed from being a local affair to being a regional attraction. It was not until 1966, after the success of the first “International Trade Show” that it was decided to hold the fair every year on the first weekend in July. In 1992, Europe's first mineral and fossil fair was launched on the last weekend in June and has kept the same schedule ever since.