Jewellery made to symbolise or commemorate a person or event rather than simply to adorn is of historical interest and is often comparatively cheap.
Most early jewellery - and many pieces produced right up to the 20th century — served more than merely decorative purposes, embodying some theme, device or message in its design. Such jewellery [...]
Read the rest of Antique Symbolic Jewellery
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 [...]
Read the rest of Emerald Jewelry Kingdom: Symbol of Verdant Spring continue…
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 [...]
Read the rest of Valuable Stones Chrysoberyl: The Three Dissimilar Brothers
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, [...]
Read the rest of Smooth Jewelry Inlay Opal: the Patchwork Harlequin continue…
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 [...]
Read the rest of Peridot Jewelry: Stone of the Heavens
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 [...]
Read the rest of Yellow Diamond Topaz: Captive Gold of the Sun continue…
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. [...]
Read the rest of Yellow Diamond Topaz: Captive Gold of the Sun
ALL stages of imaginable color possibilities are captured by this gemstone which, in addition to white and black, embraces every hue to be found in the spectrum, not only in pure tones but in all the fine nuances of innumerable shades, transitions, and mixtures. Should a collector set himself the task of amassing all the [...]
Read the rest of Tourmaline: the Crystallized Jewelry Kaleidoscope
Over and above the gemstones are still numerous minerals which make beautiful gemstomes in cut form as well as completely fulfilling the requirements of beauty, rarity, and durability. Their popularity and their market success are mostly determined by their great rarity; because of the latter they are all the more coveted by collectors. Contrary to [...]
Read the rest of Gemstone Collector’s Viewpoint
Pure chance is often the best ally for discovering the secrets of Mother Earth. She surely still holds many surprises in store. Though relevant preliminary studies did effect positive results in this case, it was nevertheless a happy accident for the Finnish mineralogist Laitakari when, during the Russian-Finnish winter campaign of 1939/40 while inspecting fortification [...]
Read the rest of Labradorite and Spectrolite: Vibrant Rainbows
