Somewhere in the Livradois, in Auvergne, Alexandre Chercy plunges his shovel into a river and deposits the gravel in a large sieve. With three accomplices, he “scratches”, term of the jargon of gold panning. Then he sprinkles the sieve several times, to evacuate the earth, and moves the gravel by giving sharp blows. Finally, he turns the sieve over onto a sandbank. As if by magic, six small blue stones appear in the center. Some are of a deep warm blue; others, of a lighter, translucent blue. He lets his joy explode: “Look what I found! His companions come to admire before resuming their quest.
For Bernard, 57, a part-time farmer and proud owner of these lands, which include a kilometer of river, the adventure began about two years ago. “One day, a man came to ask me if he could look for stones or precious metals in the river, I accepted, of course. Then a second, a third. I thought it was recreational gold panning. But when I saw a dozen people digging at the same time, it struck me. »
Érik, a friend with a passion for stones, then alerts him to the looting he is undergoing. By way of proof, he presented her with the invoice for a 1.6-carat “pebble”, bought for 1,500 euros from one of the miners over the weekend. Bernard falls from the clouds. According to his estimates, up to 300 people have come to scratch at his place since 2017. Some even arrived from Belgium and Switzerland! “When I saw the resale of stones and learned that it had become a business, I said stop,” he says. Especially since the situation between sapphire seekers threatened to degenerate: some punctured the car tires of their competitors! Bernard even saw a man loading kilos of gravel into his trailer to do the sorting at his house.
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We are in the presence of stones of exceptional quality
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Bernard and Érik then decide to hunt the looters. But not all… They sympathize with some. But what to do with this discovery? The two friends wonder about the real value of the stones. They contact an expert from the National Institute of Gemmology in Lyon, Ghislaine Ettahri. “I checked several processes for analyzing light and refraction, to find out if they were sapphires,” she explains. It’s the case. We are in the presence of stones of exceptional quality, both in terms of the intensity of the blue and the rarity of inclusions. They are really very pure. All sapphires in this vein have shades between blue and blue-green. This is not the first time that sapphires have been found in Auvergne, the Romans were looking for them and Louis XIV valued their exploitation. But there, it is the largest known deposit in Europe. An opinion confirmed by Patrick Voillot, a fellow supplier to jewelers in Place Vendôme and author of numerous films on precious stones. “They showed me a 30-carat stone, there are exceptional sapphires with a very beautiful color. »
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No one in the family imagined having such a treasure under their feet
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“What is surprising, underlines Bernard, is that there is nothing upstream in the river, and that downstream we unearth few precious stones. I’m exactly in the funnel. And to think that these are my native lands! No one in the family imagined having such a treasure under their feet. The manna could bring in a pretty penny. The price of a cut carat is estimated at at least 1,000 euros, more if the stone is of an unusual size. By opting for a reasoned exploitation, the receipts are estimated at a minimum of 300,000 euros per year. In total, the vein would represent several million euros.
Sapphires would have a magmatic origin
Bernard and Érik also called on a geologist, Fleurice Parat, a specialist in petrology at the Faculty of Geosciences Montpellier, to work on the specific chemical composition of sapphires from Auvergne and try to identify the primary deposit. The adventure becomes scientific. The meeting with another enthusiast, David Dugrenier, allows them to push the research. It was he who, in November 2015, unearthed a splendid centimetric sapphire in a lava rock. A geological rarity. “I was walking near the volcano, I sat down to rest and a blue stone jumped out at me,” he says. My brother and I took this piece of rock. I had it examined and certified by a bailiff. “The origin of these sapphires always intrigues us,” admits Fleurice Parat. This discovery suggests that the volcano would have spit them out and that they would therefore have a magmatic origin. She turns to David and jokes: “Give me your stone, I’ll break it to make blades and pass them through the mass spectrometer, in order to study the signature of the sapphire.” The young man reacted with a laugh: “Out of the question, even if I am proud to contribute to the advancement of science. I knew there was a goldmine in the area, I’m glad I found it. »
To exploit this reserve, Bernard and Érik ask half a dozen miners, including Alexandre Chercy, to continue their research, in order to produce jewelry made in France together. “We offered them something legal, within a company that we created, Rivière de France, testifies Érik. We wanted this passion, these human encounters to translate into a business model that equitably shares the fruits of this discovery. »
Here, one out of ten is a beautiful stone. It’s one in a hundred in Sri Lanka, one in a thousand in Madagascar.
That day, after a few hours of work under a blazing sun, the miners returned to their base camp. The fundraising evaluation ritual is well established. The sapphires are examined using a special magnifying glass to identify any impurities or flaws that would make them unsuitable for cutting. In this Auvergne deposit, one in ten sapphires represents a beautiful stone. “It’s one in a thousand in Madagascar and one in a hundred in Sri Lanka,” says Érik. After being weighed, the finds are placed in small bags on which the date of the day is written. Each researcher has a jar in his name, which will join a safe.
Last centerpiece of the device, the lapidary. Alexandre Jurmande learned stone cutting for pleasure, four years ago, before perfecting his skills with a jeweler. Asbestos remover in the metallurgy, he now occasionally works for a jeweler in Besançon. “If I can turn my passion into a job, I’m not going to say no,” he says smiling before tackling the size of a 2.87-carat (0.57 gram) sapphire. He examines her carefully. “The stone is large, but due to its shape and a crack, it will only be about 0.8 carats when cut. The loss will be 70%. It is by giving it a round shape that I will have the least loss of material. The whole thing will require two hours of work.
Also read. Jewelry: stones more precious than diamonds
The whole team is now working to set up a jewelry brand with “ecological, ethical, 100% natural” stones. The first samples of sapphires were taken under the supervision of a bailiff. Each cut stone is the subject of a description by the gemologist Ghislaine Ettahri, declining the aesthetic and gemmological elements of the sapphire. They guarantee certified origin, traceability and flawless ethics. Contacts have been made with fishing and nature protection associations to limit the environmental impact. “It’s important,” says Erik. We want to be able to tell the story of our stones. The luster of our Auvergne sapphires is natural, it is not heated to accentuate it, no chemical treatment is applied, no earth is added in the cracks to make the stone cuttable. Here, the children do not work and the wealth is meant to be shared. »