The Curious Lore of Precious Stones is a 1913 anthology of gemstone folklore, mythology and historical anecdote compiled by George Frederick Kunz (1856–1932), the long-serving vice-president and chief gemologist of Tiffany & Co. and one of the most influential gem-trade figures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Published in Philadelphia by J. B. Lippincott Company, the book runs to approximately four hundred pages and remains in print continuously through Dover and other reprint editions.

Author

Kunz joined Tiffany & Co. in 1879 and rose to become its principal gem buyer and intellectual ambassador. He played a central role in introducing many North American gem materials to the international market, including the lithium-bearing spodumene variety later named kunzite in his honour, and the manganese-bearing beryl variety morganite (named at his suggestion for J. P. Morgan, a major Tiffany client). Kunz also assembled what would become the Smithsonian's Morgan-Tiffany Collection of American gemstones.

Beyond the trade, Kunz was an active scholar. He served as an honorary curator at the American Museum of Natural History, advised the Smithsonian, and produced a substantial body of writing on gem materials, mining history, and gemstone folklore. The Curious Lore is the most ambitious of his folkloric works.

Contents

The book is organised by theme rather than by species. Chapters address birthstones, the magical and medicinal properties attributed to stones in classical, medieval and early modern sources, the use of stones in religious symbolism (with extensive treatment of the breastplate of the High Priest in the Hebrew Bible), zodiacal associations, gemstone amulets and talismans, and the lore associated with specific famous stones. The text draws extensively on classical Greek and Latin authors (Pliny, Theophrastus), medieval Arabic sources, and European authorities including Marbode, Albertus Magnus, and Camillo Leonardi.

Method and limitations

Kunz wrote in the Edwardian compendium tradition. The book is encyclopaedic in scope but uneven in critical method: many traditions are reported as received without source criticism, and some attributions to classical or medieval authorities are loose. Modern scholars typically use the book as a starting point and a guide to the literature rather than as a final authority. As a survey of what was believed about gemstones across two thousand years of European and Mediterranean culture, however, the book has not been superseded.

Significance

The Curious Lore is significant in three respects. It systematised the literature of gemstone folklore for an Anglophone trade and lay readership; it shaped the modern conception of birthstones (alongside Kunz's involvement in the 1912 American National Association of Jewelers' standardisation of the modern birthstone list); and it remains the most widely cited source in popular gemstone writing, blog posts, and customer-facing material to the present day. Most modern healing crystal and metaphysical properties literature traces back, often without acknowledgement, to Kunz.

For working dealers, the book is useful as background reading on the cultural reception of gem materials and as a reference for the kinds of folkloric questions customers periodically ask. The companion volume The Magic of Jewels and Charms (1915) extends the same approach to non-mineral materials and to broader categories of jewellery and amulet.