Alan Hodgkinson (John Alan William) 24th March 1937 – 7th October 2024
I suppose it was bound to happen at some point, that amazing human being, always so full of life and energy would be lost to us all. Gemmological events in Scotland and worldwide will never be quite the same again.
Alan was born in Liverpool and attended the same school as John Lennon – just a few years earlier. He had a pretty normal upbringing with his brother and his parents instilled in him a love of family life and gardening. In his late teens he was called up for National Service and was posted to Aberdeen – secretly he had hoped that he would be posted somewhere abroad and exciting. However, it turned out to be a blessed stationing because it was there that he met Charlotte. He was fortunate enough to win her heart and she was to become his life-long partner, unwavering supporter and glamourous assistant at many a gemmological meeting at home and abroad. They have two daughters, Avril and Valerie. Valerie was pivotal in getting his magnum opus finally into print, more of that later.
There is no doubt that Alan’s passing will leave a huge vacuum. He was a remarkable man, an incredibly generous person and a true inspiration to his many students and colleagues. But Alan’s interest in gemmology had very humble roots, he started working for a jewellery shop in Aberdeen and there he came into contact with gemstones of all types and hues. He was hooked and started his own collection. To make a bit more money he drove a taxi at night. He would take his gemstone collection with him and study the specimens while he sat in the cab between fares, he found that he could take the table of a cut stone up to his eye and look through it and see different properties in each stone when illuminated by a single light source. These differences were distinct enough for him to be able to tell families of gemstones apart. This was to be the birth of his Visual Optics way of looking at gemstones.
Alan and Charlotte moved to Glasgow when Alan took up the post of Group Training Officer for Jewellery Training Scotland Ltd. Later, he opened their own unique jewellery shop in Clarkston that bore his name. There they established a highly respected retail outlet and as part of this Alan would offer talks on jewellery and gemstones to his customers and local groups. In the early 70s, as he became more immersed in gemmology, he started giving short courses with diamond expert and editor of the Retail Jeweller, Eric Bruton. Weekend courses grew into week-long courses and he was becoming established as a teacher and speaker. As time went on Alan’s collection of gemstones grew and grew. It was his great joy to share this with students and gem experts alike, offering a wide spectrum of gem specimens.
When I was tasked with re-establishing the Scottish Branch of the Gemmological Association of GB way back in the late 90s, Alan needed no encouragement to give his support. There is no doubt that his time, connections and charisma were vital to its success. Starting with a very small conference in the National Trust Meeting House in Perth with only a handful of delegates, the conference grew year on year to become the must-go-to event in the world-wide gemmological calendar. Along the way the Scottish Branch morphed into the Scottish Gemmological Association, due mainly to the sterling work of the late Catriona McInnes who dedicated considerable time and effort to its establishment. All the others who worked so hard behind the scenes to make this happen know who they are, and Alan would have been the first to acknowledge their input. But it was his presence as the figurehead that really put the Association and the annual conference on the map and drew in delegates and speakers from all over the world.
Somewhere between the original Scottish Branch of the Gemmological Association of GB being lost and the new one established; the EGGs – the Edinburgh Gemmological Group was established. Brian Jackson organised regular informal meetings at the National Museum in Chambers Street for qualified FGAs to get together. The main focus was to look at, and help to classify, specimens of zircon in the museum collection. Alan went along when he could to lend his time and knowledge, but mainly he enjoyed the occasional field trips to various localities where there were some interesting (and sometimes controversial) finds. Alan and Charlotte were often seen scrambling over rocks and up mountains in search of Scottish gem quality rough.
It was probably due to Alan not having a scientific degree, and possibly because he was an Aries, that he always had a way of thinking outside the box to find the answer to his questions. His lack of an academic background did not initially endear him to the gemmological establishment and for far too long he didn’t get the respect that he deserved.
He was a pioneer and his passion and natural inquisitiveness kept him working tirelessly to have his methods recognised. I remember the first time I went to a weekend course up at Highland Craftpoint in Beauly nearly 40 years ago where Alan and Pat Daly gave us a deeper delve into the wonderful world of gemstones, including the beauty of their inclusions. Alan’s enthusiasm was infectious and it opened up a whole new world of wonder. Using his Visual Optics method Alan was also able to tell several different colourless cut gemstones apart in a darkened room with just a single light source. This was a party piece that he was happy to demonstrate to many an amazed audience and which Bill Hanneman described as Alan’s “Eyeball Refractometer”!
As the years went on Alan’s reputation was growing and he was in demand as a speaker not just in the UK but further afield. He gathered many honorary offices as he travelled extensively lecturing and enthusing. Charlotte was always by his side once the girls were old enough to be left at home. They travelled to Australia, the United States and all over Europe. Latterly, when Charlotte was advised not to fly long distance, they got around it by doing short hop flights and travelling home on a cruise ship.
Almost as soon as they met, Alan started to work with American Bill Hanneman to develop Visual Optics. Bill was a kindred spirit who also loved to find affordable ways of testing gemstones. Together they came up with the Hanneman-Hodgkinson Refractometer. This was not a top of the range high-tech metal boxed gizmo, it was two aluminium can lids with holes in them, two wooden posts with stands to take the lids, a long roll of paper marked at specific intervals with additional lines at the halfway points and a pen torch for the light source. Set up correctly this assembly could enable you to see the different RI and dispersion of each cut gemstone. Add in a polarising filter and dichroism could also be observed. Alan had a certain irreverence for the orthodox methods and his inimitable approach was enjoyable and always had a big dose of fun attached to it. I recall making the VHS tape and DVD of Visual Optics with Alan; Jilly Pollard and Richard McDonald were filming and producing. There was much hilarity and somewhere there is a Visual Out-takes video!
It was early on in his career that Alan started to collect all sorts of information about gemstones, taking photographs and doing illustrations for his talks. With Eric Bruton’s encouragement, this developed into an intention to produce a definitive book. It became a bit of a joke at meetings, asking Alan when his book was coming out. It was always due “next year”. Meantime, Richard Drucker published Alan’s smaller book, Visual Optics II, helping to inspire the completion of Gem testing Techniques. It took his daughter Valerie’s valuable input to pull everything together. All the words, illustrations and photographs that he had gathered over more than 50 years had to be arranged into a publishable format.
“Gem Testing Techniques” is an absolute classic, self-published in full colour and running to over 500 pages, it finally came out in 2015. The first prints were greedily snapped up and a further run has also sold out. Charlotte remembers well the day the first boxes of the books arrived. There were lots of them and they were heavy, each book weighing in at 2.2 kilos! They had to turn their spare bed on its side and stack the boxes quickly before dashing off to a gemmological event. Keen to keep control of the sale and distribution Alan and Charlotte packed each order and took them to the post office. Such was the dedication of this couple.
There are at least three other obituaries that I know of - all are different and go into the huge number of honorary positions and awards that Alan received during his long life. One by Pat Daly on behalf of GemA, one very personal one by Peter Buckie – whose observations of Alan very much resonated with my own - and another from across the pond by Gary Roskin.
Alan was a naturalised Scot and enjoyed wearing his full dress kilt when entertaining overseas visitors at our annual conferences. He was also interested in so many more things in life other than gemstones. He was as happy tackling the horsetails in his Ayrshire garden and growing vegetables, just like his dad, as he was off on a gem collecting field trip on a windswept Scottish hill side, as he was walking along the beach with Charlotte listening to the suggestive calls of an eider duck or feeding the blackbird that knocked on their kitchen window. And of course, there was golf. Alan loved a round or two of golf.
We will all miss Alan’s sense of humour, that twinkle in his mischievous bright blue eyes and that smile that was never far from his lips. But most of all we will miss his huge generosity and openness with his knowledge and understanding. His generosity with his time, sharing and support have left a wonderful legacy for gemmology students at all levels and were fine qualities writ large in this unique individual.
Joanna Thomson FGA DGA
GILLIAN O’BRIEN 6th January 1957 – 5th January 2025
Anyone who was fortunate enough to meet Gillian will have found a kind and generous person with a warm tinkling laugh, a big welcoming ready smile and a great sense of fun. I knew her for many years and never once heard her say a bad word about anyone, she was one of those rare souls who looked for the good in people. But Gillian was much more than that. She was a wife, mother and grandmother, an Art College graduate, a talented jewellery designer and maker, a dedicated gemmologist, an FGA, a DGA and a Registered Valuer. She also ran her own successful jewellery shop in North Berwick.
She was born in Edinburgh and went to Portobello High School and then to Edinburgh College of Art and thereafter to teachers training college. She married her husband David in April 1981. They were a devoted couple, very happily married and Gillian often described David as her very best friend. She is survived by two daughters, Vicky and Melissa and three grandchildren.
I recall her telling me that she had taught at a school in Granton - one of the less salubrious areas of Edinburgh - where she encountered 11-year-old children turning up to class well under the influence of alcohol! I think she made a good call to go into the retail side of jewellery rather than staying with teaching!
Gillian opened her shop, L’Argenette Jewellery, in North Berwick, there she undertook many commissions and valuations throughout her long working life. She will be greatly missed by her many regular and happy customers. She loved gemstones, cut or rough, and was an avid collector. She was a regular on the field trips organised by the Edinburgh Gemmological Group (EGG) and latterly the Scottish Gemmological Association. She tackled many different terrains with a huge rucksack on her back partly to take home gemmy specimens, but it was always also bursting with bits of equipment that she had brought just in case someone else might need them!
There was something of the mother hen about Gillian, she always put others needs ahead of her own. I recall one field trip to Aberdeenshire to look for tourmalines, the going was rough and she ended up stranded on her back with the weight of her huge backpack, laughing too much to be able to get back up, while Jim Walker, also helpless with laughter, tumbled face first into another ditch!
Gillian was a regular attender at the evening EGG meetings organised by Brian Jackson at the National Museum in Edinburgh, putting her FGA to good use helping to prepare a paper on the museum’s Zircon collection. We studied for the Diamond Grading Diploma together and it was an enjoyable experience, as much a social time as a learning experience. We both passed the exams!
When I was tasked with restarting the Scottish Branch of the Gemmological Association she was right there offering to help and taking on the office of Treasurer, the one job that no-one ever wants to do. She was always the one collecting the money at meetings or the meals we went to afterwards and my memory is of her counting out the notes and coins to make sure everything tallied, while the rest of us tucked into our puddings!
She loved a gem-based get-together and never missed a Scottish Gemmological Association annual conference. Indeed, she was instrumental in taking the nascent annual event of a small group of interested members meeting for two days of talks, into a long weekend of gemmology talks finishing with a field trip on the Monday. Working with the late Catriona McInnes they created one of the best and most enjoyable gemmological conferences in the world. She was a regular delegate at the London based GemA annual conferences and made an annual pilgrimage to the Registered Valuers Conference in Loughborough. At these events she increased her already wide knowledge of gemstones, jewellery values and history and made many, many friends from all over the world. She also took the opportunity on these occasions to raise a glass or two of Drambuie with fellow gemmologists.
Her love for her family and gemmology and jewellery was so great that despite a very poor prognosis, and often feeling unwell, Gillian attended the Registered Valuers conference last autumn, she went to the Scottish Gemmological Association symposium in Glasgow, she travelled to Cyprus in October with David to see their beloved daughter and grandchildren and enjoyed dinner with the members of the SGA in December. She even managed to spend some days in her shop helping with the pre-Christmas sales.
I have been reminded that I should also mention that Gillian was also a great dancer, she and her husband David went to all sorts of different classes and were often on hand to help others with the right steps at gemmology dinner dances. One more hidden secret was her commitment to being a Brown Owl with the local brownie group. Certainly, she was a multi-facetted gem!
It's time now to raise a glass and celebrate Gillian’s exceptionally well-lived life.
Joanna Thomson FGA DGA
Lesley Skinner FGA
January 2025
