CONTACT INFORMATION:
Richard D. (more commonly "Dick") Mandell
1403 Summerville Ave.
Columbia, SC 29201
803 7710246 fax: 803 7774494
dick@bluejade.info dick.mandell@gmail.com mandellr@gwm.sc.edu"
ABOUT ME
The jade adventure began late in my life and late in the adventuring in Guatemala.
As Richard D. Mandell I am readily surveyable in google.com . I was an academic until the retirement in December 1992. As Dick Mandell or sometimes Richard Mandell, I am trackable as as a foot-race runner, cyclist and triathlete. I have done a lot of other things.
The Guatemalan adventure started in February 1981 during nasty social upheavals in the country. From the beginning, I got around warily and widely. Enchanted with Mayan weavings, I collected a huge number of them. There were assemblages of dance masks, other crafts and even slingshots.
Jade had been an interest for decades. But only negligibly in the case of Guatemalan jadeites which are readily seen in raw and in finished forms. They were duller than the finer jadeites from Burma and Siberia and even the finest nephrites from British Columbia and parts of Asia. As now there were always Guatemalan jadeites that were unique. All the same, the distinct mottled and conglomerate Guatemalan jadeites were not pretty enough. Almost needless to say, museums in Guatemala and all over the world (but most grandly in the United States) displayed blue jadeites were enchanting. I knew that, though ancient, carved Guatemalan emerald greens were viewable in museums, in the raw state these pretty stones scarcely existed and were never as fine as the very finest Burmese greens.
In February of 1999 there was time for it and so -- despite warnings of every sort of hardship and peril, I did to the two hour drive to a rumored center for jade hunters. There were (surely deliberate false directions) and other sidesteps and mistakes before the luck of encountering Jose Loyo in their village Pueblo Nuevo about 6 kilometers from the prosperous commercial center, Teculutanan in
the department of Zacapa.
Jose became and remained a hero of this story. Early on heo led me to other informed figures in the known raw jadeite holding area around Teculutan which (getting ahead of the story) rather rapidly grew much larger. I was already aware of the scholarly (well, not really again getting ahead of the story) debates about where the ancient Costa Rican, so-called "Olmec blue" jadeites came from. I learned quickly of the nearly geological (in effect) upheavals due to hurricane Mitch in October of 1998. Some fine (for this stage in the history) river boulders went into my baggage for return to the house in South Carolina. I began to read as profoundly as the literature permitted in new areas. The discovery-rich travels in the jade country began in June of 1999. There will be much more from me on this.
This is a characteristic playa or riverbank that hold, among millions of other things, a few jadeite river slicks. Almost none of the slicks are of any interest at all. This scene is in the sparcely rewarding rain-less season.
A big chunk of Olmec blue with a partly obscuring husk.
One of biggest