Jewelry Lovers

Clear crystals make their impact through the magic of color, vividness of luster, and play of light. The enchantment of opaque ornamental stones is kindled by their colors and ravishing color schemes, as well as by the endless array of patterns resulting from their inexhaustible combinations and permutations. Tortuous bands, apparently fortuitously arranged circles, and veinlike swathes of color are the reflection of immutable laws unfathomable in their diversity.

Full of continuous surprises and quite unpredictable, they continually pose the cutter new problems, which require from him a high degree of virtuosity. It is not just a case of following the natural circumference of the stone, giving it the prescribed form, and thus fashioning a corresponding object; no less important is the understanding of the course of individual color trends, and—in the unforeseen emergence of a differently colored layering inside the stone—the ability to incorporate it organically and simultaneously into the whole concept of the masterpiece in the process of creation.

Inasmuch as he remains the servant of earthborn material, his subtle sensitivity raises the cutter above the status of a mere artisan to a master of his medium. The work of many thousands of years has gone into completing our knowledge of the character of the stone and painstakingly learning its unique rules. Cutting of gemstones seems to have had its origin in India. Even today many of the crystals available in the trade are still cut there. Much later on, Idar-Oberstein, the town on the upper Nahe, took over the leadership in stone cutting, which is still valid today, especially that of colored and ornamental stones, the development of which cannot be separated from its famous agate cutting.

Legend has it that the Romans, during the building of their military and trade road from Mainz to Trier, found round stones with pale red and bluish-green banding which resembled the rough stones from the Achates River in Sicily which were cut into ornamental and seal-stones in Imperial Rome. Documentary evidence of lapidaries in Idar-Oberstein dates from 1454, when an indigenous cutting industry began to establish itself there. It made use of the agates from the surrounding hills, principally from the mines of the Steinkaulenberg, where the old tunnels may still be seen. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the local occurrences were found to be no longer worth exploiting, unemployment forced many families of cutters to leave home. A few of these migrants, who were wandering through Brazil as itinerant musicians, one day made the remarkable discovery that the courtyard of a homestead was paved with stones showing the unmistakable characteristics of agate.

Prospecting resulted in rich finds; their importance for the mother country can be assessed from the fact that since about i 840 Brazil, together with Uruguay, has become the main regular supplier of this raw material. Soon it was accompanied by further treasures from Brazil’s rich soil, principally amethyst, aquamarine, topaz, and tourmaline, which, alongside the conventional agate cutting, required a second, refined cutting method—the art of lapidary or colored stone cutting, finally promoting Idar-Oberstein to the status of a metropolis of the gemstone industry, still only surpassed by the diamond-cutting centers of Antwerp and Amsterdam. In the early days of agate cutting the waterpower of the river and its tributaries was used to drive the mighty mill wheels and sandstone grindstones. Lying stomach down across a bench or so-called tipping stool, the cutter held the heavy agate hard against the rotating stone. Although some processes are still carried out according to old custom and with a deal of medieval romanticism, modern technique prevails today, with electric motors and new methods of work.

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