Braldu Stone

Localities

The valleys we work

A village name is worth more to a collector than any adjective. These are the places our buying actually covers, and what each one is known for.

Where we concentrate

Two rocks an hour apart

Our depth goes into two suites that have nothing geologically to do with each other. Ruby, spinel and pargasite sit in recrystallised marble along the Main Karakoram Thrust, exposed when the highway was cut through the valley. Aquamarine, fluorite and fluorapatite come out of granitic pegmatites high above Sumayar. One is a metamorphosed limestone, the other a cooled granite melt. They are treated as two separate supply chains because that is what they are.

That depth includes locality fingerprinting. It is the old dealers' skill of telling which working a stone came from by how it looks. The knowledge is not on the internet and cannot be acquired quickly. We also buy topaz and tourmaline when the quality justifies it.

  • The Aliabad ridge

    Aliabad · Ganish · Dorkhan

    Ruby, red and pink spinel, pargasite and sapphire in white calcite marble. The workings run along the ridge our buyer's town sits under. This is the shortest supply chain we have and the one we can stand at.

  • Hassanabad Nala

    Hassanabad · Hunza valley

    Gem corundum from the valley above Hassanabad, and the Hachindar workings above it.

  • Gupa Nala

    Across the river from Ganish

    Ruby in calcite marble from another of the workings in the same marble belt.

  • Chumar Bakhoor

    Sumayar Valley, Nagar

    Aquamarine, pink octahedral fluorite and fluorapatite on coarse muscovite, out of pegmatites above four thousand metres. Bought in Sumayar's hamlets rather than at the diggings. The diggings belong to the village and only its own people work them.

  • Sumayar

    Nagar

    Axinite, sphene, diopside, vesuvianite and moonstone out of the valley below the pegmatites.

  • Through the trade

    Alchuri · Stak Nala · Dassu and others

    Far-side material that reaches us through dealers rather than from our own workings. Recorded as exactly that, with the same care and no more certainty than the record supports.

How a locality is set

Written down while the person who dug it is still standing there

Attribution is captured at the point of purchase and written the way the trade writes it: mine or village, then valley, then district. "Chumar Bakhoor, Sumayar Valley, Nagar District, Gilgit-Baltistan" is a locality. "Pakistan" is not.

Not every entry is a village. The Aliabad ridge covers a run of workings rather than one named pit, and material bought through the trade carries whatever the seller could actually tell us. Both are labelled as what they are. Rounding either up to a specific village would make the whole record worth less.

Two places we deliberately do not tidy up. The district boundary between Hunza and Nagar was redrawn in 2015, and the standard mineralogical databases still file the Aliabad, Ganish and Hassanabad marble localities under Nagar District while those villages sit in Hunza District. We have not resolved which is correct, so we print the village and the valley and assert neither district.

And pargasite. Hunza is the premier source in the world for gem-quality pargasite crystals, and we will say that. We will not call it the world locality for the species, because the type locality is Pargas in Finland, and Pargas is where the mineral got its name. The distinction costs us nothing and a collector who knows it will notice.

Where the purchase record supports a village, the listing prints the village. Where it does not, the listing says how far the information goes and stops. What we refuse covers the rest of it.

First look when pieces land

Buying is underway in Hunza. If you collect a particular valley, say so and it becomes a standing want rather than a hope.

Get first look How we work