BY HELEN SERRAS-HERMAN

Wolfgang and Diana Mueller, known by their company name DiWolf, is a dynamic couple, with lots of knowledge and years of experience in lapidary and jewelry artwork. Wolfgang Mueller is a retired geologist, mineral collector, and a very active lapidary. He has rockhounded in many places around the country, especially for his favorite wulfenite and copper ore minerals. He is famous for his hand-cut spheres and eggs, as well as rare gem material cabochons and one-of-a-kind beads.

Wolfgang is well recognized for his eggs and spheres. He loves the cuprite-azurite-chrysocolla copper ore material from the Morenci Mine in Arizona.

HELEN SERRAS-HERMAN

Wolfgang was born in 1942 in the same town (Belgrade) as the person for whom the naming of wulfenite is based, Franz Wulfen, a Jesuit born in 1725. Wolfgang earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in geology at the University of California. He worked at San Manuel Magma Copper, which was once a surface and underground porphyry copper mine in San Manuel, Pinal County, Arizona. Dur-ing this time, he gained a deep understanding of all copper-related minerals, including the associated oxide minerals of chrysocolla, malachite, native copper, and cuprite. Later, he worked for the Magma Copper Company’s corporate entity Newmont Mining in Danbury, Connecticut.