Many people jump into the process of making jewelry and take shortcuts that only hurt them in the long run. Maybe they buy tools and supplies that don’t give them the results they’re looking for. Or they don’t treat their new tools right. Or perhaps they’re worried that their great new “original” design will make [...]
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Twenty-four goldsmiths worked continuously for six years to make the finely chiselled and richly ornamented Crown of the Andes from one massive gold nugget. This splendid jewel is adorned with 453 emeralds of a total weight of 1,521 carats. Today, each carat attains a valuation price of $3,000. After a long odyssey this treasure, estimated [...]
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We find enjoyment, it is true, in the agreeable green of grass and leaves, but incomparably greater is the pleasure of beholding an emerald; for its green is the most satisfying of all,” so Pliny extolled the aristocratic chieftain of the beryl family. Nevertheless, the reader has the feeling that even Pliny, despite his telling [...]
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The color predominating at the time is reflected from the alexandrite. Thus it constitutes an extreme example of the so-called day-and-night stones, whose color appears different according to the lighting. It is consequently appreciated by connoisseurs who know its secret. It was discovered in the thirties of the last century on the slopes of the [...]
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Seldom properly valued by laymen, but an inexhaustible source of wonderful delight to collectors, are the chrysoberyls. Little known, jealously hoarded by the earth and only yielded up in parsimonious numbers, they are assured of a prominent place among the gemstones. Their great rarity, combined with their three varieties, completely different from one another, has [...]
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The collective name garnet embraces a large mineral group whose members each have their own individual names corresponding to their appearance. This family provides a good example of the fact that though the structure of a mineral determines its external form (garnets crystallize throughout in the cubic system), it is the chemical composition which is [...]
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For the first time we encounter in this delicate, virginal gem, a gemstone from the ranks of the rock-forming feldspars. Taken all together as a group, the feldspars are the most widely distributed mineral association. Their chemical composition divides them into three different combinations of calcium, sodium, and potassium coupled with alumina and silica, all [...]
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A few years ago a hitherto unknown and unusually interesting occurrence was discovered in Tanzania supplying green, so-called prase, opal, which owes its color to a small nickel content derived from weathered serpentine. Since the opal here, as in all the other localities, crops out relatively near the earth’s surface in fairly easily workable rocks, [...]
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In precious opal the earth has given us another gemstone whose magic beauty—a fascinating play of sparkling colors—does not depend on included coloring agents but on an intriguing effect of light. Through diffraction of the incident light by ultramicroscopically fine grating planes within the stone, it is split into its spectral colors, clothing the opal [...]
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The beguiling luster of this attractive gemstone—shining like damp moss in autumn sunshine—earned peridot the sobriquet of “green gold.” In earlier times it was readily linked with the sun, of whose bright rays it was said to be the keeper and therefore alleged to be a shield against the threat of eclipse and blindness of [...]
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