Browsing: Gem Profile

When London jeweler and author Edwin Streeter published the fourth edition of his book “Precious Stones” in 1884, he devoted…

When in the early 1980s researchers at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) unveiled a system to classify the breeds…

Around the turn of the century, miners extracting copper at various sites in Bisbee, Ariz., tunnelled into cavernous rooms whose…

It took gem-oddities specialist Lowell Jones five years to accumulate the greatest modern-day collection of fine abalone pearls—and just five…

Can an all-nacre, non-nucleated pearl from a cultivated salt-water oyster or freshwater mussel be called natural? Gemologists will answer this…

Although it gets so little respect from mainstream dealers it could be Rodney Dangerfield’s birthstone, smoky quartz boasts a small,…