[Jewelry making - Article 00001] - Re: [Orchid] Gemstone, Enhancment and Lab-grown Gems

[doug]

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Hi Glenn,

    As a guy who grew up digging Aquamarines, Tourmalines, Graphic
    Granites and asteriated Rose Quartzes out of pegmatite dike tailings
    piles on his way home from elementary school and has been involved
    with minerals and gems ever since, I read your posting with a mixture
    of surprise and utter disbelief. Despite having tried marketing to
    retailers who buy bricks for five dollars in order to sell them for
    ten or fifteen (without caring what or how fine they were), I wasn't
    aware that there were any people who feel as you do on the *creative*
    side of the counter; I just always assumed that views like this were
    the purview of shopping mall comparers. Nonetheless, you've asked a
    couple of what I consider to be very important questions, and since I
    get the impression you're both genuinely interested in their answers
    and fairly young, I'll do what I can to explain and try to introduce
    you to a new way of seeing things. It may not be the easiest thing to
    accomplish, however... 

    Your first question, 

>     where does "natural" end and "unnatural" begin?

    is a fair one, but it misses the most important point of all -- the
    point that is at the crux of who most of us are, as creative
    craftsmen and women, and why we're so passionate about what it is
    that we do. The choices you've highlighted are not so much between
    "natural" and "unnatural", as they are between "naturally occurring,
    usually butt-ugly and utterly undesirable by almost everyone but, on
    rare occasions, potentially very beautiful and, thus, both rare and
    prohibitively expensive" and "naturally occurring, usually butt-ugly
    and utterly undesirable by almost everyone but, under the right
    conditions, and with just the right combinations of chemicals, heat
    and/or other physical treatments, physically transformable into
    something the masses can appreciate and afford". You see, Glenn, you
    are not alone in your fascination with "gems and gemstones". For
    thousands of years, mankind has striven to find, possess and exhibit
    items of surpassing beauty, primarily as statements of achievement.
    (FWIW, in my opinion, it's we *men* who've usually gone after gems
    and other "objets d'art" for their achievement value, while, more
    often than not, women cherish them as souvenirs of fond past
    experiences, which enable them to take soothing, 3-second
    reminiscence "vacations" in the midst of their more difficult days.)
    Anyhow, for centuries, the characteristics which defined gemstones
    *as* gemstones have been beauty, rarity, and durability, and it was
    just naturally assumed that only royalty, and the wealthiest of the
    wealthy could afford them, because they, and they alone, possessed
    the resources necessary to pay for the gems' removal from the tonnage
    of overburden and/or bedrock which contained them, and fashioning
    into wearable "statements" of personal adornment. 

    Between 160 and 120 years ago, way back before the Great Depression
    came along and put a damper on things, Western Europe and this
    experiment called The United States underwent an economic overhaul
    called Industrialization, through which more people had more chances
    to accumulate more things, and more and different technologies
    became available for unearthing these previously unavailable baubles
    we all love so much, and fashioning them into goodies for personal
    adornment. If I'm not mistaken, this period saw the birth of fashion
    jewelry, as most of us know it today, in which tin, zinc, whalebone,
    copper or brass could be set with brightly colored and/or
    foil-backed "Rhine-stones" -- that is, glass imitation "stones" which
    were manufactured in the Rhine region -- which were created in order
    to enable the relatively impoverished masses to have something
    beautiful with which to adorn themselves, so they could feel "just
    like Royalty". And so began a quest, as the middle class came into
    existence, for any- and everything that would give the impression
    that one person of limited means was, somehow, more valuable that
    all others of his or her caste. This delusion, and the very
    successful attempts to market it to those susceptible to it, have
    buried more millions of people in debt, and created more feelings of
    helplessness and comparative inadequacy than probably any other
    social movement in recorded history. (Oh, and it's also helped create
    and further the very industry that sustains all of us, here on the
    Orchid List!) 

    Unfortunately, that double-edged sword has only grown sharper since
    the advent of the cable TV-based round-the-clock shopping networks,
    twenty years ago, which dangle the lure of what might best be called
    "implied opulence" before the unsuspecting eyes of those who don't
    know any better, and insinuate to all of those within viewing
    distance and reach of a credit card that they, too, can have whatever
    they want and look like the kings and queens of fairy tale fame, "for
    just pennies on the dollar". You say that the treatments necessary to
    maintain that myth "boggle your mind", but I can't understand how. 

    ...Unless, of course, you have trouble with that because you've
    managed to overlook the fact that you're a consumer, too, just like
    everyone else, and that your customers are only there because of the
    trends in gemological consumerism (i.e.treatments and other
    cost-reducing manufacturing angles) that make it possible for them
    to buy from you. Just as various aspects of the media have been
    successively "dumbed down" to make them more accessible to the
    lowest common denominators of society, so too, have the lowest grades
    of the most prized gem materials been enhanced, to place them within
    easy reach of those hellbent on not only keeping up with the Joneses,
    but slipping into the social lead in front of them (however
    temporarily). After all, sooner or later, there comes a point at
    which the fantasy cruise of unlimited resources and irrevocably
    discountable prices runs aground on the jagged rocks of better
    qualities, empty ore veins and exhausted contact zones. If the earth
    only holds, say, a hundred thousand tons of Amethyst, for example,
    and those who view the gem world as it appears you do are convinced
    that the supply is bottomless and the prices can never increase
    beyond a certain point, the only rational solutions remaining are to
    either treat the living hell out of something that approximates the
    previously-available commodity, or tap a chemical company to
    synthesize enough of something that looks and acts like it to meet
    market demands. 

    Let's look at this quandary from another perspective, for a
    moment... If you were presented the choice between knowing that
    neither you, nor anyone you loved (or would even be likely to meet)
    could ever reasonably aspire to owning a piece of jewelry that
    contained one of these (truly mind-boggling) little miracles we call
    "gemstones", because they each cost the equivalent of a full years'
    salary to procure, or knowing that, for a considerably more
    attainable price, you could have something that was still beautiful,
    fairly durable, and relatively rare (although less rare than one of
    those hugely expensive rarities known as natural gems), which would
    you choose? Okay, now, how about if these latter choices' treatments
    were so carefully researched and so well executed that not only could
    you not tell the difference between them and their natural
    counterparts, but neither could most others, and the difference in
    price was extraordinary, how might you choose? 

    I've actually just had a great example of this in my studio! On the
    one hand, I had a 100% natural, lush, velvety blue 6.40 ct. Sapphire
    oval (reminiscent of a fine, but ever-so-slightly sleepy Tanzanite)
    with a 'discounted' wholesale price of $2000/ct.; next, a 5.20 ct.
    heavily heated African Sapphire oval with evidence of bulk
    diffusion, wholesaled for $250/ct. and finally, a beautifully cut,
    hydrothermally-grown, 4.42 ct. Ruby oval that went for $150/ct. All
    three were within shouting distance of 10x8mm, and all were
    chemically constructed, at the molecular level, of Aluminum, Oxygen,
    and trace (doping) elements like Iron, Chromium and Titanium. But
    their origins and respective retail prices -- and thus, the degrees
    of relative access to them which the public, at large, could hope
    for -- were markedly different. At a keystoned retail price, the most
    affordable of these could be had for just over a thousand dollars; a
    number that's very easily attainable by practically anyone with a
    high school education. And the next one up could be had for just
    scarcely more than twice the price of the first, even though it
    possessed the allure of having once been formed in nature. But to
    get to the one after that, you'd have to multiply the first stone's
    price by at least twenty -- more than that, actually, because of the
    premium normally paid for such an exquisite and completely natural
    stone. Chances are good that it will eventually retail for a figure
    closer to the $50-60,000 mark, once set in a piece of fine Diamond
    and Platinum jewelry of the calibre it deserves, and that it will be
    eagerly snapped up by some lucky "someone" before the New Year
    arrives. 

    To address your second question fully would probably take far longer
    than the first one did, because any attempt to do so would require
    first finding a way to instill an entirely different set of values
    and a sense of awe where your current commodities-type value system
    now lies. The core issue is not whether a stone came from this
    grouping of chemicals or that, but whether its origins bring it
    closer to being yet another insignificant smudge in an incessant
    torrent of low value, high-tech, man-made "flashy things" which hold
    all the gravitas of toilet paper and hold our feeble attention spans
    about as long as it does, or to a true miracle of nature, utterly
    individual and as minutely different from the next stone as you are
    from the person next to you, which ties us to that natural spring
    from whence we, our senses of awe, and our spiritual beliefs all
    eminate. Next up, you say that you 

>     have a hard time understanding why heating, drilling, filling,
>     waxing, oiling etc. of "natural" stones to create something rarely
>     (if ever) found in nature is acceptable while creating the same
>     thing from basic raw materials is not.

    The reason you're have such a hard time with this, Glenn, is that
    you've bought into the whole consumerism thing so completely and
    utterly, and so matter-of-factly, that you can't comprehend the
    existence of any values beyond those of the covalent bonds which
    hold chemical compounds together. I'm sorry to be so blunt about it,
    but your challenge seems obvious to me: if you can't sense any
    intrinsic value in anything beyond how flashy something is, or at
    what price, or how fast you can crank out behemoth chunks of it to
    the marketplace, or whether or not you can save a sale by
    representing a piece of cheap junk to customers as being "real", or
    not, then some serious congratulations are due to all of those
    Madison Avenue advertising agencies who programmed your values into
    you. In short, if your values are really as you're describing them,
    you may very well be the perfect match for a Stepford Wife! Perhaps
    the greatest obstacle you're facing is this last one, which you'd
    essentially reiterated as a separate "last point", towards the end of
    your letter: 

>      The last point on created vs. natural is that the created stones
>     do not create the hostile environment that natural stones do. The
>     murders and oppression of people does not occur like it does in the
>     mining process (especially in areas like Burma etc.).

    The reason that these negative things do not happen with created
    stones is similar to the reason why, during gasoline shortages,
    people do not wait in long lines to fill their cars' fuel tanks up
    with either milk or river water: because, despite being plentiful
    and reasonably similar in structure (i.e. liquids), these other
    "commodities" are intrinsically worthless. The reason that created
    stones don't engender such passionate (albeit occasionally
    unfortunate) responses is that they are, for most intents and
    purposes, not worth the effort. If they had any intrinsic value, at
    all, people would go out of their way to do whatever it took to
    attain them. As it is, they realize that the vast majority of these
    "fakes" are just that: imitators to the throne. No matter how
    closely they resemble or imitate those incredibly beautiful, durable,
    rare and precious miracles of nature, the best that they will ever be
    able to aspire to is their durability and a small fraction of their
    beauty. After all, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", and what
    beautiful woman doesn't suddenly become *infinitely* more beautiful,
    the moment your emotions enter the equation and you fall in love with
    her? The difference between passionately yearning for a natural gem
    and plunking down a few bucks for a created attempt to equal it is
    like the difference spending an hour either falling in love or
    balancing your checkbook. Enough said. 

Douglas Turet, G.J.,
Turet Design 
P.O. Box 242
Avon, MA 02322-0242
Tel: (508) 586-5690 Fax: (508) 586-5677
doug. at .turetdesign.com

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