Crystal Craze and Rock Mania : Crowds Will Leave No Stone Unturned at Santa Monica Civic
To fast-track decorators, they are the room accessories of the moment. To New Age enthusiasts, these same objects are tools to help heal the body, mind and spirit. And to hobbyists, they are materials to be collected, polished, sculpted and carved--or just put on the shelf and stared at.
What we’re talking about here is rocks. Slabs and chips and chunks from the earth that have become the stuff of big business in recent years.
Today and Sunday, for instance, about 5,000 people are expected to fill the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium for the Red Carpet Show, an annual exhibit and sale of rocks and gems, which is sponsored by the Santa Monica Gemological Society, the Westside Mineralogical Society and the Los Angeles Lapidary Society.
Crowds Are Up
“I would say it (crowd-size at such shows) started increasing in the last six years,” says Gary Ferguson, director of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, which presented four gem and mineral shows during 1987.
“The crowd sizes are increasing steadily. They’re just about to the maximum. Booth spaces are at a premium. In fact, the building is a little small for most of these shows. They all use every inch of space we have.”
Dealers say two groups--New Agers who use stones for healing and interior decorators who like the sparkle and drama in this most enduring form of nature--have contributed to a boom in the mining and sales of many types of minerals in the last seven or eight years.
Shops catering to such buyers have been increasingly springing up in both large and small communities, even appearing in such high-rent, ultra-trendy areas as Los Angeles’ Melrose Avenue (where you’ll find a shop called Minerale), Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive (home of Isis) and Santa Monica’s Main Street (location of Nature’s Own).
Rocks even made the cover of Time magazine this week. Actress Shirley MacLaine posed holding a quartz crystal cluster in the palm of her hand to illustrate the magazine’s story on the rapidly expanding New Age.
While large gem and mineral shows (which spotlight vast numbers of rock dealers and exhibitors) once appeared infrequently, they are now regular events. In Southern California, there is a weekend gem and mineral show nearly every month, usually at one of the Southland’s major exhibition centers such as the Pasadena Center, the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, the Los Angeles Convention Center and the Long Beach Convention Center.
Ronnie Davis, a Tucson-based miner and mineral dealer who travels around the country and who displayed his finds at the International Gem & Jewelry Show last month at the Los Angeles Convention Center, reports that interest in minerals has been steadily increasing for the last eight years--and skyrocketing in the last six months.
“Mineral specimens were on their way out about eight years ago,” he recalls. “There wasn’t much of a living in it back then.”
Those were the days when most people interested in minerals were referred to as “rock hounds”--because they often found or mined rocks themselves and then turned them into jewelry or other decorative objects.
“It used to be we could go out and search though the hills and find lots of jasper and other stones,” says Wilbur Dutton, president of the Santa Monica Gemological Society. “But they’re becoming harder and harder to find. Some people are putting mining claims on them (mines) and closing them. And other sources are becoming depleted.”
Increasing depletion as well as growing demand has had a marked effect on prices for certain minerals (usually those in the quartz family, which are favored by healers).
Says Davis: “The price of clear quartz in the last three years has gone from $4 to $50 a pound. And in the last six months, interest in mineral items is probably ten times what it was.”
Orders From Interior Designers
Davis and many dealers credit New Agers, who claim that stones and crystals can assist humans in amplifying and balancing their energies, with being the initial force behind the renaissance in minerals. More recently, the sellers say, they have received growing numbers of orders from interior designers whose clients have requested that large geodes or clusters of crystals be incorporated in their decor.
“In the last six to nine months, many of the showrooms in the Pacific Design Center and many of the showrooms on Robertson Boulevard and Melrose Avenue have all of a sudden introduced crystals or amethyst geodes or other minerals in their displays,” says Los Angeles interior designer Nancy Bohnett.
“The minerals make very good accent pieces,” she says. “You used to see a lot of unusual vases but not anymore. A lot of people don’t understand the metaphysical uses of crystals, including myself, but sometimes that is very intriguing to clients.”
Peggy Kidwell, who teaches classes in healing with crystals and other minerals at the Thomas Institute of Metaphysics in Los Angeles, observes that many people are intuitively drawn to minerals without knowing why. But then, she adds, after meditating with stones or working with them in other ways, individuals may learn to physically sense the subtle energies of the stones and can feel their own energies being positively affected by the interaction.
The fact that such ideas are considered undiluted mumbo-jumbo to many others is not lost on Kidwell, who has been visiting gem and mineral shows for the last seven years.
‘At first, they (dealers) acted like we were a big joke,” she recalls, “but now even if they still think we’re nuts, they’re more friendly to us in the sense of acknowledging the needs of the metaphysical community. A lot of dealers would say to me, ‘Oh, you’re working in healing, I’ll give you this much off on the price.’ A lot of dealers have been very open and receptive to the healers even though they don’t understand it. Many of them have bought books and learned something about the stones.”
Healing With Stones
Literature on the metaphysical uses of stones has multiplied in recent years along with consumer interest.
“In 1983, there were maybe 10 books on healing with stones and only one specifically on quartz crystals and healing,” Kidwell remembers. “There must be 40 or 50 books out now. The Whole Life Expo shows once only had a few crystal dealers. Now they have to limit the number of crystal dealers because there are so many who want to get in.”
Kidwell suggests that visitors to any large gem and mineral show might consider spending several hours there, allowing time to survey everything and then return to the rocks that interest them the most.
Prices sometimes vary widely for similar pieces, she says, because some dealers are also miners, while others have bought from miners and may charge more for similar specimens.
But, she cautions, “sometimes the lower price is because a stone has been dyed” to appeal to the decorator market. “The cheapest stone may not be the best deal. Most people who work with stones for healing want to work with naturally colored stones, not with those that have been dyed.”
For those who are unsure if a stone’s color is natural or dyed, Kidwell recommends asking dealers. She also advises those unable to find what they’re looking for on the vendors’ tables to ask about such pieces anyway. “Sometimes they have those things but they just didn’t bring them with them,” she notes. “You can make an appointment to see them after the show or they may know where you can get what you want.”
As for guidelines on choosing stones for healing, Kidwell and many other metaphysical teachers suggest intuitive choices are usually best.
“Just select what you’re drawn to. Don’t let matters such as pure aesthetics be the key determiner. The feeling should be the determining factor. Some stones are going to feel better than others,” she says.
“You don’t buy stones for healing the way you would if you were a jeweler. People who say they don’t have any intuition or don’t feel any physical sensations about the stones should be encouraged to just go ahead and make a selection based on what they like.”
A Boom in Minerals
Anthony R. Kampf, curator of minerals and gems at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, also believes that interest from New Age seekers is chiefly responsible for the boom in minerals.
“But I don’t necessarily consider this a healthy thing,” he says. “With people assigning metaphysical properties to certain minerals, it’s shades of the Dark Ages, when there was a certain amount of mysticism associated with minerals . . . .
“I can see a lot of people out there who have become quite enamored with certain minerals to which they are assigning these properties, which, in scientific terms, the minerals don’t have . . . . These people, as far as I’m concerned, have no special knowledge about the subject other than the fact that they’ve decided they can attract people’s imaginations.”
Kampf advises that novices at gem and mineral shows would best be served by reading books or magazines, but steering clear of metaphysical literature.
“Ask questions on what’s good to buy,” he says. “One way to do this would be to join the (L.A. County Museum of Natural History’s) Gem and Mineral Council, because there are a lot of collectors and dealers, mineralogists and gemologists, who belong.”
Kampf also recommends that those interested in collecting minerals or working with them in various hobbies should join the local clubs such as those sponsoring the Red Carpet Show. He points out there’s been a weakening in interest among traditional mineral collectors in the last decade, but finds even that decline has been somewhat reversed because of all the publicity minerals have received via New Agers.
“I will have to admit there are certain benefits in having so many people interested, even for what I consider the wrong reasons. It has buoyed up the business and hobby ends of it.”
On that point, there is little disagreement.
‘Room for Everybody’
“There’s room for everybody,” enthuses dealer Mary Montgomery, a non-New Age member of the Santa Monica Gemological Society, who with her husband is dealer co-chairman for the Red Carpet Show.
“We like to see people being interested in the earth sciences rather than just specifically jewelry,” Montgomery says. “We have one member in our club who’s a chiropractor who uses crystals for healing purposes. He feels it’s very helpful to his practice. If that’s the way people want to see it, that’s fine and dandy. We hope we can interest more younger people. If we don’t, the whole thing’s going to die.”
Red Carpet Gem and Mineral Show, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1855 Main St., Santa Monica, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. today, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Sunday, admission $3 for adults, 75 cents ages 12 through 15, children under 12 free.
