Welcome to and many thanks for visiting my private web site, the Soriano Collection.

For some 30 years I lived in Southern Africa and my main business was to mine and trade in semi precious stones.

During the 1960’s, I was the first one to export rough and polished MALACHITE stones from Congo, the present Zaire, to markets in Europe and the Far East.

In Rhodesia / Zimbabwe, I was involved on mining QUARTZ CRYSTAL and AQUAMARINE.
In South West Africa / Namibia, my companies owned mining rights for AMETHYST, CALCEDONY and TOURMALINES. For many years, we were the largest traders in SODALITE, PICTURE JASPER and ARAGONITE.

In Botswana, we mined GRAY and also PINK AGATE as well as CARNELIUM.

From Mozambique we exported regularly, hundreds of pounds weight of GARNET and all colors of TOURMALINE, but mostly PINK, the RUBELITE.

From the Kingdom of Swaziland we exported container lots of GREEN QUARTZ and a soft, gray stone, most suitable for carvings. We named it the WONDER STONE.

In the Kingdom of Lesotho, we had a license to cut and polish DIAMONDS.

In South Africa we owned a small (alluvial) DIAMOND mine as well as a small GOLD mine. We could not find much gold, on an economical scale and we decided to use the surface clay to make BRICKS. It turned out to be a very successful operation.

We also mined in South Africa: RED and MOTTLED JASPER, ROSE QUARTZ, AMETHYST, JADE and TIGER’S EYE.

All of above mentioned stones are to be found in many other parts of the world. With the exception of TIGER’S EYE

TIGER’S EYE occurs only on a contained area of the Karoo Desert in the Northern Cape Province. We owned some of the mining rights and we also had durable contracts with most of the other producers. For almost 20 years we controlled nearly all the international trading in this “most pleasant to look at” stone, the TIGER’S EYE. Our factory, GEMCRAFT in Johannesburg produced tens of thousands of objects made from our colored stones. Over the years, I collected some of the best, nicest and rarest items produced by Gemcraft. I added to my collection certain items purchased, traded or received by me from local tribal Chiefs, during my intensive travels throughout Southern Africa.

My wife and I settled in Florida some years ago and we decided now to dispose of some of the unusual items collected over many years.

Many if not most of them are unique specimens or high class items manufactured from the best materials mined by us.

Very few items from my collection could be duplicated today.

I am very proud to offer such items in the SORIANO COLLECTION and I am sure that the buyers, the new owners of each item will get much pleasure from having any of them.

When you decide to purchase any of the offered objects and you would like to have more pictures, showing the chosen object from different angles, please let me know. I will gladly e mail to you several extra pictures with more details.

Please do not hesitate to contact me, should you require extra information or want to know more about that part of Africa that was like my own back yard for many years.

Please let me know if you would like to find any special stone object or any other item. I know many people around and it will be my pleasure to locate your precious item.

I thank you much for your attention and for visiting my web site, the

SORIANO COLLECTION