You'll Find Some Mind-Boggling Specimens At This Gallery

I'm leery of words like "the biggest," "the oldest" and "the finest." They always sound like they originated in a mouth stuffed with a long cigar.

I feel gullible if I believe; cynical if I don't.

Checking out Museum Associates, a new gallery at 1013 First Ave., I believe those words. On display are minerals and fossils - but don't drop in expecting to find a bauble to wear on a chain.

These are mind-boggling specimens, such as a giant, gem-quality amethyst geode 6 1/2 feet long, that weighs 3,800 pounds. Approximately three dozen specimens are on display, each quite literally museum quality. Among them are a mating pair of 30 million-year-old turtles; a native copper "bonsai tree," and some stupefying quartz clusters an estimated 250 million years old. Don't try to stretch your mind to grasp just how old that is; it hurts.

When gallery owner Richard Berger points to a Brazilian twin smoky quartz estimated to be one billion years old and casually says, "That one was fully formed 800 million years before the Atlantic Ocean," the mind stalls out.

Almost as incredible is the news that Berger began his collection some 20 years ago with a modest loan from the Small Business Administration. "I went bankrupt after seven years," he says. "Then gradually people began to get interested in minerals, and after 11 years of persevering, I finally began to make a living at it."

Year by year, Berger refined the collection, plowing profits back into ever-finer specimens. Seeing a 10-foot-high fossil stone that bears the perfect imprint of a giant fossil palm frond surrounded by nine fish, all seemingly frozen in time in one idyllic moment, it is easy to believe Berger's claim that he buys pieces for their aesthetic qualities, not merely because they are big, or old.

His most unusual pieces are a group of sandstone concretions Berger dubs "natural sculptures." The exotic stones, that appear to flow like puffed drapery, were excavated from a sand mine near Fountainbleau, France, that has been yielding fine white sand for the past five centuries, originally for ceramics and glass, and now for the aerospace industry.

Not until 1987 were the first of these odd concretions found - pieces that Berger notes have been officially recognized in The Mineralogical Record as a new mineralogical find. Not many were found. Most of them, including the 10 largest, are on display at Museum Associates. They are natural wonders; sugar-crystal surfaces over soft, billowing shapes that could have served as prototypes for the Pillsbury Doughboy, or the Michelin Man, but considerably more complex and intricate.

Berger and Miriam Dyak, his wife and partner, moved from New York to Seattle five years ago, but went through a few years of withdrawal and extrication before deciding to open a gallery. They originally planned to house the collection in the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, in the space vacated with the closure of the lavish "Moscow: Treasures and Traditions" exhibition.

When those plans fell through, Berger and Dyak redesigned space at 1013 First Avenue, that formerly housed a photography gallery. They were particularly creative with the back gallery room, where extravagant potted palms and strategically placed ferns create the ambiance of a tropical jungle, with dim lights and humid air.

It is a gallery unlike any other in the city. And you can't just drop in at will and browse.

The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday by appointment, for private viewings of the collection. Berger and Dyak also conduct small tours through the collection Wednesday evenings and Saturday afternoons. Reservations are essential. The gallery telephone number is 621-1693. No more than 15 people can be taken through the gallery at any one time.

Berger's long-range dream is to build a Museum of the Earth. He's off to a strong start.