gems, lore, history, stories about gems

Sinkankas: Charming anecdotes of gems, from the occult and curious to those that are true. Inasmuch as the type is small, the physical size of the book belies the really large amount of information contained therein. The gems treated are the classic precious stones plus topaz, cat’s-eye, turquoise, beryl, organic gemstones, varieties of quartz, lapis lazuli, and also porphyry, toadstones, carbuncles, jade, and paste. Considerable scientific information is incorporated and there are useful remarks on large or famous gemstones, especially among the diamonds. A handsome production as befits the De Vinne Press, and the book passed into a number of printings, some for jewelry firms who then issued them as favors to special customers. — Among the memorabilia in the Kunz Collection, United States Geological Survey Library, Reston, Virginia, is a letter, dated Boston, June 12, 1913, from Shelley to George Frederick Kunz in which he explains that he is in dire financial straits and begs Kunz to buy several copies of his 12th edition of Legends of Gems at one dollar each, to which letter is appended a note from Kunz enclosing a check for one copy. In a previous letter, dated Oct. 29, 1912, from Boston, and enclosing a clipping from The Boston American newspaper, Oct. 27, 1912, Shelley relates his dismal career which began as a bank clerk in London, where he was born, and through several types of occupations, at none of which he was to succeed. The article claimed him to be a cousin to the famous poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and grandson of Commodore Boyman “who piloted the British warships out of Boston harbor in the famous Evacuation which we Bostonians now annually celebrate.”