Bibliography of George Frederick Kunz

The GIA Library is delighted to offer this draft of a revised George Frederick Kunz bibliography. As a foremost gemologist and mineralogist who lived from 1856 to 1932, he was amazingly prolific in writing books and articles on a diverse variety of titles. Some of the intriguing topics are Gems and Precious Stones of North America, Mineral Industry Reports, Missions of California and Bridges of New York. He was Tiffany and Co.’s vice president of gemology from 1879 until his death in 1932.

We have updated the Kunz bibliography published by John Sinkankas in his notable work Gemology: an Annotated Bibliography. The Library’s own Caroline Nelms compiled the information from various sources, including work done by Yvonne Markowitz, Jewelry Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. Now it is your turn. We need your assistance to add new items to the list as well as provide some of the missing details such as page numbers. Please e-mail or mail them to Dona Dirlam (ddirlam@gia.edu) and we will update the bibliography as needed.

While at Tiffany’s, George Kunz created a set of books for Tiffany and Co. to give each year to its customers: Natal Stones, Sentiments, and Superstitions connected [associated] with Precious Stones. There are editions dating from 1891 until 1931. We believe there are 31 editions with page numbers ranging from 17 to 35. Since there is some confusion on editions, dates, titles, and page numbers, we would like help in creating an accurate list of these. For the time being we have grouped them together in the bibliography included here.