Published in 1913 by J. B. Lippincott Company of Philadelphia and London, The Curious Lore of Precious Stones by George Frederick Kunz stands as one of the most ambitious and enduring works ever written at the intersection of gemmology, history, and cultural anthropology. Kunz, who served as vice-president and chief gemmologist of Tiffany & Co. for decades and who had the mineral species kunzite named in his honour in 1902, brought to the project both the rigour of a practising scientist and the breadth of a lifelong bibliophile. The result was a volume that catalogued, with scholarly footnotes and cross-cultural sweep, the folklore, mythology, magical beliefs, and medicinal uses that human civilisations across four millennia had attached to gemstones. It remains, more than a century after its first printing, a foundational reference for gem historians, auction specialists, museum curators, and serious collectors.

George Frederick Kunz: The Man Behind the Lore

Born in New York City in 1856, Kunz demonstrated an extraordinary aptitude for mineralogy from childhood, reportedly assembling a significant mineral collection before he reached his teens. He joined Tiffany & Co. in 1879 at the age of twenty-three, without a formal university degree in science, yet went on to receive honorary doctorates from several institutions and to serve as a United States Commissioner to international expositions in Paris and elsewhere. His professional life was characterised by a dual commitment: to the practical trade in fine gemstones on one hand, and to their historical and cultural documentation on the other.

Kunz was a prolific author. His earlier work, Gems and Precious Stones of North America (1890), had established his credentials as a systematic recorder of geological and commercial fact. The Curious Lore of Precious Stones represented a deliberate pivot toward the humanistic dimension of gems — the stories, fears, hopes, and beliefs that had accrued around them across cultures as distant from one another as ancient Babylon, mediaeval Europe, Mughal India, and pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. A companion volume, The Magic of Jewels and Charms, followed in 1915, extending many of the same themes.

Scope and Structure of the Work

The book is organised thematically rather than strictly by gem species, though individual chapters are devoted to the most historically significant stones. Kunz drew on an exceptionally wide range of primary and secondary sources: classical Greek and Roman lapidaries, mediaeval European bestiaries and medical treatises, Renaissance alchemical texts, Sanskrit literature, Arabic and Persian manuscripts, and the records of early modern natural historians such as Anselmus de Boodt, whose Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia of 1609 Kunz cited repeatedly. He also incorporated the findings of contemporary archaeologists and ethnographers, giving the work a breadth that no single predecessor had achieved.

Among the principal subjects addressed are:

• Talismanic and amuletic use. Kunz documented in meticulous detail the belief, widespread from ancient Egypt through the Renaissance, that gemstones possessed inherent protective or curative powers. The ruby was held to warn its wearer of approaching danger by darkening in colour; the sapphire was believed to preserve chastity and to cool fevers; the emerald was thought to strengthen eyesight and to shatter in the presence of falsehood.
• Birthstone traditions. Kunz had already played a direct role in standardising the modern birthstone list — the American National Retail Jewelers Association adopted a list in 1912, the year before the book's publication, in which Kunz's influence was evident. The Curious Lore provided the historical scaffolding for that list, tracing the association of specific stones with months back to the twelve stones of the High Priest's breastplate described in Exodus, through the writings of Flavius Josephus and St Jerome, and into the mediaeval European tradition of assigning gems to the signs of the zodiac.
• Engraved gems and intaglios. Kunz devoted considerable attention to the ancient and Renaissance practice of engraving gemstones with figures, portraits, and magical symbols, arguing that the choice of stone was rarely arbitrary — that the material itself was understood to amplify or direct the power of the image cut into it.
• Gem use in religious contexts. From the jewelled regalia of Byzantine emperors to the reliquary settings of mediaeval Christendom, from the gem-studded kalgi ornaments of Mughal turbans to the sacred jade objects of pre-Columbian cultures, Kunz traced the persistent human impulse to invest precious stones with spiritual significance.
• Medicinal and pharmaceutical applications. The book records, without endorsing, the extensive tradition of using powdered or dissolved gemstones as medicines — a practice documented in ancient Indian Ayurvedic texts, in Arabic medical literature, and in European pharmacopoeias well into the seventeenth century. Diamond powder, for instance, was variously described as a deadly poison and as a sovereign remedy, depending on the source and period.
• Individual gem histories. Chapters on the diamond, ruby, sapphire, emerald, pearl, opal, turquoise, and numerous other species weave together geological identity, historical provenance, and accumulated legend, providing what amounts to a cultural biography of each stone.

Scholarly Method and Its Limitations

Kunz was a product of his era, and the Curious Lore reflects both the strengths and the blind spots of late Victorian and Edwardian scholarship. On the positive side, he was scrupulous in citing his sources, and his bibliography — running to several pages — remains a useful guide to the primary literature of gem lore. He was also careful, in most instances, to distinguish between what ancient or mediaeval authors believed and what modern science had established.

At the same time, the work occasionally conflates distinct cultural traditions, and some of the ethnographic material relating to non-European cultures reflects the paternalistic assumptions common to scholarship of the period. Later historians of science and of material culture have noted that Kunz sometimes accepted secondary sources uncritically, particularly where the original texts were in languages he did not read directly. These limitations do not invalidate the work — they are characteristic of ambitious synthesis in any era — but they counsel the modern reader to treat specific attributions with appropriate care and to consult more recent scholarship on individual traditions.

It is also worth noting that Kunz was not a disinterested observer: as the senior gemmologist of the world's most prominent jewellery house, he had a professional interest in elevating the cultural prestige of gemstones. The Curious Lore is never crass in this regard, but the selection and framing of material does tend to emphasise the nobility, mystery, and historical depth of the gem trade — which was, after all, his trade.

The Birthstone Chapter and Its Lasting Influence

Perhaps no section of the Curious Lore has had more direct practical consequence than Kunz's treatment of birthstones. The book traces the tradition with genuine scholarly care, beginning with the description in Exodus 28 of the twelve stones set in the breastplate of Aaron — identified variously in different translations as sardius, topaz, carbuncle, emerald, sapphire, diamond, ligure, agate, amethyst, beryl, onyx, and jasper — and following the tradition through Josephus's first-century commentary, through the writings of St Jerome, and into the mediaeval European practice of associating gems with the twelve apostles and with the signs of the zodiac.

Kunz argued that the custom of wearing one's birth-month stone as a personal talisman was a relatively late development, probably no earlier than the eighteenth century in Poland, from where it spread westward. This historical account, however contested in its details by subsequent scholars, provided the intellectual legitimacy that the jewellery trade required to promote birthstones as a coherent system. The 1912 standardisation of the American birthstone list, which Kunz helped to shape, and the publication of the Curious Lore the following year, together constituted a moment of remarkable commercial and cultural alignment.

Reception and Legacy

The book was well received on publication, reviewed favourably in both scientific and popular periodicals, and quickly established itself as the standard reference on its subject. It was reprinted numerous times throughout the twentieth century, and a Dover Publications reprint issued in 1971 brought it to a new generation of readers during the revival of interest in crystals, minerals, and alternative belief systems that characterised that decade. Subsequent reprints have kept it continuously in print.

The work's influence on later gem literature has been pervasive, if not always acknowledged. Virtually every subsequent popular book on gem lore — and there have been hundreds — draws, directly or indirectly, on Kunz's compilation. Museum exhibition catalogues dealing with historic jewellery regularly cite it. Auction house catalogue notes, when they venture into the historical significance of a particular gem type, frequently echo formulations that originate with Kunz. The GIA's own educational materials on gem history and lore acknowledge the work's foundational status.

For the practising gemmologist or the serious collector, the Curious Lore serves a function distinct from a technical reference such as Gübelin and Koivula's Photoatlas of Inclusions in Gemstones or the GIA's gemological manuals. It does not help identify a stone or assess its quality. What it does, with considerable erudition and occasional elegance of prose, is situate gemstones within the full sweep of human meaning-making — the long history of the stories people have told about the objects they have most valued. That is a different kind of knowledge, but not a lesser one.

The Text in Context: Kunz Among His Contemporaries

To appreciate the Curious Lore fully, it helps to place it within the broader intellectual landscape of its moment. The early twentieth century saw a remarkable flowering of interest in the history of science, in comparative religion, and in what was then called the history of magic and superstition — a field represented by scholars such as Lynn Thorndike, whose monumental History of Magic and Experimental Science began appearing in 1923. Kunz was working in a related vein, though his focus was narrower and his intended audience broader. He was writing for educated general readers as much as for specialists, and the book's prose, while dense with citation, is consistently accessible.

At the same time, the period saw the consolidation of modern gemmology as a discipline. The Gemmological Association of Great Britain was founded in 1908, five years before the Curious Lore appeared. The GIA would follow in 1931. Kunz's work thus appeared at a transitional moment, when gemmology was asserting its identity as a rigorous scientific discipline while simultaneously inheriting a vast legacy of pre-scientific belief. The Curious Lore can be read as an act of preservation — a systematic effort to record that legacy before the advancing tide of scientific rationalism rendered it entirely inaccessible to a general readership.

Availability and Editions

The original 1913 Lippincott edition, with its full-colour plates of engraved gems and historic jewels, remains the most desirable for collectors of antiquarian books on gemmology. Fine copies in original binding command significant sums at specialist book auctions. The Dover reprint of 1971, though lacking the production quality of the original, is the edition most commonly encountered in reference libraries and is entirely serviceable for scholarly use. Several print-on-demand facsimile editions have appeared in recent decades; their quality varies considerably, and the colour plates are frequently reproduced poorly or omitted. Digital versions are available through various online archives, making the full text freely accessible to researchers worldwide.

For any serious student of gem history, the acquisition of a good copy — whether the original Lippincott edition or a reliable reprint — remains one of the more rewarding investments a library can make. The book has not been superseded; it has been supplemented. No subsequent work has attempted, let alone achieved, the same comprehensive survey of gem lore across cultures and centuries. In that sense, The Curious Lore of Precious Stones occupies a position in the literature of gemmology analogous to that of a great founding text in any discipline: indispensable, imperfect, and irreplaceable.

Further Reading

• GIA — Birthstones: History, Myths, and Meaning
• GIA — George Frederick Kunz: The Gem Man
• AGTA — Gem Lore and Birthstone Traditions