This is Throwback Thursday #8.  In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general.  If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com.  Thanks!

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Thanks go out to ESCONI member John Liskey as he provided pictures, mineral material, and the idea for this post!  Thanks, John!

If you collected minerals back in the middle of the 20th century, you were certainly familiar with Grieger’s.  That company, founded in 1930 by John Grieger, started as a hobby and it grew into a giant in the mineral world.  John Grieger was born on June 17, 1910 in Michigan City, Indiana.  His family moved to Pasadena, California sometime in the 1920s.  By all accounts, he was an avid mineral collector from an early age.  In 1930, he decided to start his own mineral business with a friend named Tommy Warner.  They named their business Warner & Grieger.   This article in the Pasadena Star-News from 2010 details some of the history of the business, which specialized in the sale a mineral specimens via catalog, but included a showroom of beautiful minerals, a lapidary shop, and a museum, at its height.

Pasadena was once the home of the largest mineral and lapidary mail order supplier in the country. It was called Grieger’s.

It was started as a hobby and expanded into a large business. John Grieger became interested in collecting minerals in the early 1930s.

He wrote in a catalog, “I started this business by picking up a piece of petrified wood, 25 years ago. Was a guest of the Pasadena Junior College mineral class on a trip to Signal Mountain in Mexico. In those days, this locality was abundant in petrified wood. Among those collected was an especially attractive wind-worn piece. One of the Los Angeles commercial cutters told me he would cut it in two and polish half, if he could have the other half. That was my first specimen and one which I still have.”

Grieger began to display his collection on racks in the backyard of the family home on Ninita Parkway in Pasadena. He soon began buying and selling from that location, shown at right in a 1942 photo. For a while, the business was known as Warner & Grieger as he partnered with Tommy Warner, whose family owned an Orange Grove Boulevard mansion. He also built a lapidary shop at the residential site.

John died in 1981 and unfortunately his business only lasted until 1997.  It had effectively faded away… most likely victim to changing interests and changing times.  You can find additional biographical information over on this page at mineralogicalrecord.com. 

Here are pictures of the 1990-1991 catalog.

Here is an example of an order sheet from 1981.

The following pictures are sure to stimulate some memories… they are of various Grieger’s specimens… most with their own Grieger’s label.