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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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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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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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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On all continents, in the sand of the seashore, in fissures in the Alps—everywhere quartz is to be found, the most ubiquitous mineral on our earth. The reason for this is that silicon dioxide penetrated throughout the entire magmatic cycle and participated, as quartz, in all stages of rock and mineral formation. In gem quality, [...]
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In her magic garden of crystal blossoms deep in the earth, the Earth Goddess cherished a treasure of choicest excellence, to which she gave an abundance of melting colors, as well as high refraction (1.72) and vivid fire (0.02 1), notable hardness (8) and complete absence of cleavage. From the sum of this generous endowment [...]
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Nevertheless, not all topazes grow from pegmatitic mineral formation, for fluorine-rich solutions also impregnated the country rock at an even later stage and, where hot enough, dissolved the existing minerals. Thus silica and alumina were freed so as to combine with the fluorine to form topaz. Such processes of replacement took place mainly in cracks [...]
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Ever since man became acquainted with topaz, this noble stone has been paying dearly for the melodiousness of its name, which was formerly bestowed on the whole range of all yellow to golden brown gemstones. At the heart of such misnomers is the citrine, a variety of quartz mostly obtained through the heating of amethyst. [...]
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