Triplegem so far...
I currently hold Professor Emeritus status from a prefectural university in northern Japan. I retired in April 2018 and now live in Bangkok, Thailand. Previously I was the co-owner of Triplegem Lapidary in Kathmandu, Nepal, and I have been traveling since 1972.
I've been buying and selling turquoise and lapis lazuli since the late 1960s when I was a jeweler/street artist in San Francisco. In 1972, I first traveled overland to Asia, stopping in Mashhad, Iran to purchase black spider-web matrix turquoise mined near Nishapur, and, after a year living in Afghanistan, I traveled to Nepal and purchased kilos of old Tibetan turquoise beads in Kathmandu. In the 1970s I bought treasury-grade lapis lazuli from the government of Afghanistan.
During the 1980s I was a gemologist and lapidary, co-owner of Triple Gem Lapidary in Boudhanath, Nepal. One of our specialties was to recut broken Tibetan turquoise beads into cabochons. Our other specialty was cutting Treasury-grade lapis lazuli, purchased from Ahmad Shah Massoud’s Mujahideen. Central Asian carpets and textiles were also collected and traded during that period, as well as rare antique beads from across Central Asia.
This shop merely continues a more than 50 year old tradition!