By Stephen E. Nash
Two old but excitable miners rejoice at the prospect of future riches, even as their daily grind is full of hardship and ill-health. One, enjoying a smoke from his pipe, holds a gold nugget, too small to see, while regaling the other with tales of the many near misses of his long mining career. The man’s loyal but irascible burro brays its displeasure at hearing, yet again, tales of what might have been. The kneeling second miner pans away, fruitlessly continuing his search.
This sculpture, Gold Prospectors by Russian émigré Vasily Konovalenko, is one of 20 gem-carving sculptures that have been on display at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science for more than 30 years. This collection is by far the best publicly accessible Konovalenko collection in the world and is the only such collection in North America.
Gold Prospectors is the only Konovalenko sculpture with an American theme. According to Anna, her husband worked especially hard to ensure that the faces are characteristically American, not Russian.
The standing miner is the more vigorous of the two; his agate hair retains some of the blond he wore as a younger man. His gaze is perceptive if not analytical; his oversize hands allude to years of hard labor. His pipe is a piece of horn, apparently the only time Konovalenko used such material. His zebra jasper shirt, jasper conglomerate vest, and sodalite pants suggest more success than that enjoyed by his besotted friend.
The kneeling miner’s hair, beard, and hat are agate; his shirt is Indian agate. His scarf, barely visible under his beard, is made of dinosaur bone, the only instance in which Konovalenko used a fossil other than petrified wood in his sculptures. His sapphire eyes and wizened, Beloretsk quartz face are earnest, if not gullible, and the mottling of his face suggests many years of exposure to the hot, Western sun.
Stephen E. Nash, a curator of archaeology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, just published Stories in Stone: The Enchanted Gem Carvings of Vasily Konovalenko (Boulder: University Press of Colorado). Lavishly illustrated with hundreds of photographs by Richard M. Wicker, Stories in Stone is the first comprehensive catalog of Konovalenko’s work.