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Ronald Ringsrud holds an emerald necklace worth more than $1 million. The necklace, which has more than 170 carats of emeralds, is for sale, and will be featured in an upcoming issue of 'Jewelers Circular Keystone,' a jewelers' trade journal.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Green Scene
Ronald Ringsrud counts himself among some 10 dealers who trade exclusively in Colombian emeralds
By Kara Chalmers
Years ago, Ronald Ringsrud traveled to Colombia and fell in love with it--its beauty, its people and its mystique. Later, after trips to the Muzo emerald mines in the heart of the jungle there, he became fascinated with its geology, too. Today, he is enraptured with Colombian emeralds, the finest in the world.
Ringsrud, 48, is a gemologist, which should not be confused with a geologist, or someone who studies the origin of stones and the forces of nature that create them. Gemologists study the 45 principal gemstones cut from minerals and used for adornment, and they also learn about the 45 secondary gemstones.
"It's a fascinating study, actually," Ringsrud said.
Ringsrud earned his gemology degree at the Gemological Institute of America in Carlsbad, Calif. The GIA offers classes in gemology, diamond grading and gem identification for people in the jewelry trade.
"A gemologist doesn't just know what makes an emerald green," said Alice Keller, editor of Gems and Gemology, the quarterly journal of the GIA. "They have to know how to separate an emerald from a green peridot, tourmaline and green garnets."
Ringsrud, a contributor to Gems and Gemology, was a featured speaker at the GIA's International Gemological Symposium in 1991, the highest honor of his career, he said.
But Keller said gemologists must learn business sense as well as scholarship. In some business situations, things can get a little competitive and hectic, she said. "He's one of the nice ones," Keller said of Ringsrud.
When Ringsrud--a man who at first seems somewhat quiet and laid back--talks about Colombia, he becomes intense. He points excitedly, with an emerald-ringed finger, to a map explaining that Colombia has the largest variety of insects and birds in the world because some regions are tropical and others are frigid.
He shows he has a passionate and romantic side when it comes to emeralds, too. As he displays his emerald specimens, he says, "I never get tired of looking." He describes emeralds as a sign of nature's intelligence and beauty.
It is still uncertain how emeralds are formed, although they take millions of years to crystallize deep underground. They are always hexagons, and they are usually found in white calcite, pyrite and in carbonaceous shale.
The world's finest and largest emeralds come from Colombia, specifically from the Muzo mine region, Ringsrud said. Emeralds also come from Brazil and parts of Africa, but Ringsrud said those stones are typically smaller with a gray undertone. The color is what puts the price on emeralds, Ringsrud said. With emeralds, unlike rubies and diamonds, bigger is not always better, in terms of price.
"You can learn diamonds off the Internet in two or three hours," Ringsrud said. "Everyone knows the price of diamonds. They're a commodity. They're not mysterious or alluring. With colored stones, every one is unique."
Ringsrud travels to his second home in Bogotá, Colombia, five times a year. There, he purchases emeralds directly from local brokers to bring home to sell to jewelers, dealers and manufacturers in the United States and Mexico, and also to customers at his store in San Francisco. If he's lucky, he gets about 30 to 100 carats of emeralds from each trip.
Ronald Ringsrud examines a raw emerald stone.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Ringsrud has been a Colombian emerald wholesaler for 15 years, but only a year ago opened his "factory outlet" store in the jewelry district in downtown San Francisco. Because his source is so direct, he said his prices are reasonable. There, among Shreve & Co., Tiffany and Cartier on Geary Street, is Ringsrud's store, the Emerald House of Colombia, complete with a green awning and bursting with1,000 emeralds. Inside the display window is a necklace with earrings and a ring to match, its pear-shaped emeralds totaling more than 100 carats. It costs half a million dollars.
Securing this one-of-a-kind set was one of Ringsrud's greatest achievements, he said, because Harry Winston's jewelry store in New York wanted it. But because Ringsrud had built up a relationship with mine owners in Colombia (and because he was persistent for 15 years), the prize was awarded to him.
Ringsrud may be one of about 10 people in the nation who deal only in Colombian emeralds, and he is probably one of two who speak Spanish fluently. Most in the industry specialize in colored stones in general, or diamonds, or emeralds from many different countries.
"It's a very narrow market," Ringsrud said, "but somebody has to do it."
Ringsrud knows he'll be an emerald trader for life, and early on he thought he might branch out to African or Brazilian emeralds, but that hasn't happened yet--and it isn't likely. The reason is that Colombia is where his heart is. Ringsrud's fascination with the green gem stemmed from his fondness for this country, which he was neither born nor raised in, but discovered as an adult. In addition, no one in his family speaks Spanish; his name is Norwegian and he's American through and through.
"It's just a very unique place," Ringsrud said, adding that there is a surreal sense in South America. "There's a little more magic in the air than in this country, and that includes the fact that life and death are more manifest down there, too. People die faster and in more numbers than people up here. It's just part of the magic."
Having lived in Mexico for two years and in Colombia for one year shortly after he graduated from college, Ringsrud realized that he will always call the U.S. home. But he will always travel, and he plans to teach his 4-year-old sons, who are fraternal twins, the Spanish language and culture. The whole family is going to Colombia for the month of March.
Ringsrud's home in downtown Bogotá is close to the emerald district in a quaint area with cobblestone streets and colonial architecture. When he goes on his 10-day trips, he stays there. Every day, he walks to the offices of emerald brokers, where they show stones and he makes offers.
"You reject most, and make a few offers. Maybe by the end of the day, some of your offers have been accepted," he said.
"It's a very human, very personal, very face-to-face business, and some people like it that way, like me. I like establishing relationships and being persistent and being loyal to my good suppliers. I know that I've met people that are so unique--they are as unique as the gemstones they sell."
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Ringsrud holds a rhinocerus beetle he brought back from a recent trip to Colombia while sons Eric and Kip look on.
For example, the last time Ringsrud went to Colombia, a Japanese buyer from California had requested he bring back for him two rhinoceros beetles, each about the size of a child's fist and indigenous to Colombia, to sell, one of which has since died. The market for the bugs in Japan went down and so they became Ringsrud's pets, Cuff and Link. On the Internet, someone offered to buy the dead one for $460 and pay even more for the live one, according to Ringsrud. Luckily, his children won't be too sad to see them go. "They're afraid to touch these bugs," he said.
A couple of years ago, when Ringsrud was trying to sell a 22-carat emerald necklace, he discovered that the GIA certification was not enough to document an emerald. So Ringsrud hired a poet, a young woman from Los Angeles, winner of a 1993 National Endowment of the Arts grant, to document the stone subjectively. That was the beginning of Ringsrud's pet project of hiring poets from the U.S. and Bogotá to document some of his stones. When people buy from him, they get a poem with their emerald. In some cases, he gives his customers whole books of romantic poetry.
"Some people are indifferent, and some people are very happy to be reminded of the subjective, romantic aspect of gifting gems," he said. "Because love is the primary motivation--well, love and guilt."
Ringsrud has not always been so interested in emeralds--he never was as a child. But he has always been interested in travel. The son of a U.S. Army officer, Ringsrud lived on bases in Panama and Puerto Rico throughout his youth, where he got used to hearing Spanish.
After college, Ringsrud didn't quite know what to do next. So he traveled. He lived in Colombia for almost a year and in Mexico for two, before going back to Los Angeles and taking a job at the GIA, in the print shop and warehouse. At that time, the GIA was in Santa Monica. The GIA's director of education, Peter Keller, had gone to Colombia and published an article on Colombian emeralds that came out the month Ringsrud started working at the institute.
"I saw this article and it just instantly became my dream to be someone who goes to Colombia and studies emeralds and studies the history and gemology," he said.
Ringsrud took classes at night, became a gemologist in 1982 and was promoted to a staff gemologist position. Ringsrud began researching Colombian emeralds, and he learned that few in the gem industry actually went to Colombia because of the language barrier and Colombia's reputation as a rough place. This is still the case today, he said.
"So I thought, well, I'll go to Colombia and specialize in emeralds because I'm totally comfortable there. I have friends there, I know my way around, and I know the language," he said.
"You can not believe everything that is printed in the newspapers about Colombia. . . . Bogotá is like a well-kept secret," he added.
When he finally took off to Colombia, it was during his Thanksgiving break from work, on his own time and at his own expense, without telling anyone what he was doing. He spent a week there studying emeralds and taking photographs, and he came back with the basis for what he said was a "pretty good article."
Keller said she was pleasantly surprised that he showed such initiative. "Here's someone who had very fundamental beginnings at the GIA, a very bright young man, who decided this is what he wanted to do," Keller said. "He literally walked into my office with this article, and the reviewers loved it. . . . He used to deliver copies to us."
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
A favorite diversion for Ringsrud is racing his Yamaha motorcycle.
It is difficult to publish in the professional journal because it is so technical and the articles are all reviewed by peers, Keller said, noting that Ringsrud is very knowledgeable and respected in his field.
In 1983, Ringsrud left the GIA and became an independent gem dealer. He started the pattern that continues today--five to six trips each year to Bogotá to buy emeralds directly from cutters. He started out with $2,000 and a credit card and within six months, he was $6,000 in debt.
"But by the time those six months were up, even though I was in the hole, I was, like, in," he said. "I had opened some doors, I had pushed down some other doors, and I was in the emerald market."
He didn't take stock again until a year or so later, and by that time, he had $30,000 in assets, cash and inventory. He opened an office with a friend in downtown Los Angeles, at the corner of Sixth and Hill streets, in the jewelry district in Los Angeles. His business, named Constellation Colombian Emerald Co., was strictly wholesale importing.
Ringsrud had two, maybe three, business cards from Colombian emerald dealers who had visited the GIA while he was there. "That was it," he said. "I didn't call ahead. I didn't announce myself. I just showed up in Bogotá at their doors. I did a little buying."
He went to the small town of Chiquinquirá and bought some rough emeralds. His first purchases were good, he said. "Of course, in that first year, I did make mistakes, but I didn't lose much because I didn't have much to lose," he said, noting that its easier to take big risks when you don't have much to lose--and no family of your own.
Ringsrud met Saratoga native Linda Salera in 1993, and things changed slightly. They met in Iowa and started a long-distance relationship while he was in Los Angeles, and she was here working at Apple Computer. When he asked her to marry him, he said he would move his business to Saratoga. He moved here, a place he had never heard of, for her--and he loved it. They bought a house near the village, and he gave her an emerald engagement ring. They married in 1994, the same year Ringsrud bought his house in Bogotá.
Although he admits that having children definitely leaves less time to go "adventuring" like he used to, Ringsrud still goes to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show every February and the Las Vegas show every June, besides numerous trips to his Colombian home.
To anyone who loves to travel, Ringsrud's life seems like a dream come true. But to him, anyone can do what he does.
"Well, you'd be surprised; you just register the desire with the Almighty and next thing you know, somebody's up there listening," he said and laughed. "I always wanted to keep traveling like I did as a child, and I didn't quite know how to do it. And then this happened.
"I like the lifestyle that gives me both cultures, the Latin and the American culture," he said. Growing up, Ringsrud didn't mind moving around. "You lose stability, but you gain flexibility."
Ronald Ringsrud is one who really did it, who proved you can have it all--a family, a successful business and a passion. He is an inspiration to anyone, not just because he followed his dream, but also because he was open to exploring what his dreams might be. He proved there is a way to do what you love and to do it with passion, a lesson too many forget.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
