Berry wins Best Single Lapidary Work award

Rainbow's Meg Berry was given the Best Single Lapidary Work award at the San Diego County Fair's Gem, Mineral, and Jewelry exhibit.

Berry received the award, which was determined by the exhibit's judges, for a four-color tourmaline stone which weighs 147.02 carats and was mined in Nigeria. The stone also won first place in the One Carving, Professional category. The 2018 San Diego County Fair theme was "How Sweet It Is"; Berry named her entries after candy and called the four-color stone "Skittles".

"I feel it's one of my best carvings to date," Berry said.

The tourmaline has red, green, and blue spirals in a white zone. "There are some subtleties," Berry said.

Berry purchased what became Skittles in February. "It was just a rough stone, and I brought it home to work on it," she said.

Approximately 60 hours of applied labor time turned the stone into the lapidary work which won the two fair awards.

Berry added second place in the One Carving, Professional class for an aquamarine beryl with a carved emerald cut. The stone Berry called "Blue Gummi" was mined in Brazil and weighs 48.85 carats.

"That's a new motif I've been working on," Berry said.

The judges also gave Berry first and second place in the One Faceted Stone, Professional class. First place was for a corundum sapphire with a trillion cut; the stone from the Umba River in Tanzania weighs 3.00 carats and Berry provided it with the name "Grape Juice". "Sapphires are very cool," Berry said.

A 9.71-carat tourmaline stone from Tanzania with a round super spiral cut gave Berry second place in the category for "Honey Drop". The specimen is yellow with shades of orange. "It was a unique color of tourmaline," she said.

Because Berry only entered one case in the Mixed Display, Work Done by Exhibitor class she received first place only for that category. Berry called her display Eye Candy.

Eye Candy contained stones of six different colors: green, purple, blue, red, orange, and yellow. More than 1,000 stones were included; most of those were roughs while the display also included more than 30 cut pieces and more than 30 hand-faceted stones. "There's a lot to look at," Berry said.

The addition of the rough pieces in Eye Candy not only enhanced the display but also allowed viewers to see the difference between rough and cut stones.

"They could see what a sapphire looks like before it's cut," Berry said. "They could see garnet before and after."

Berry added a third-place ribbon in the One Faceted Stone with Optical Phenomena class. The pyrope garnet Berry called "Fruit Punch" has a selective absorption property, allowing it to change color based on light, and it appears purple in some lights and pink in others. Berry faceted the garnet with a round super spiral cut. The stone weighs 10.12 carats, measures 17.5 millimeters, and was mined in Tanzania.

The "silk" optical property in the garnet enhances the color change properties but makes the inclusions (material trapped inside a mineral) more visible. Berry opted to take the judges' markdowns for inclusions.

"They have very good judging in the faceting category," Berry said. "It's a meticulous judging process."

The awards reception includes feedback from the judges about why entries were marked down. "It's very educational for everybody," Berry said.

Third place means that two other exhibitors had stones superior to Berry's.

"It's great," said Berry. "I love it. I don't enter to win. I really don't. It's about having a lot of things at the fair for people to look at."

The six entries which won awards were among 10 entries Berry had at this year's San Diego County Fair. Berry submits as many entries as possible to provide a better show for those who attend, so she considers a piece which doesn't win a ribbon to be an additional exhibit to complement the specimens which received awards.

"It doesn't bother me," she said of being beaten out.

Berry is originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and began her enjoyment of county fairs as a child. She has lived in Rainbow since December 1995 and previously rented a home in Fallbrook next to The Collector Fine Jewelry and owned by The Collector proprietor Bill Larson.