Emeralds and the Power of the Pink City
The theme of emerald unites three of our Winter issue’s papers. First, lead authors Andrew Lucas and Nirupa Bhatt profile Jaipur’s gem and jewelry industry. Renowned as a modern emerald cutting center, Jaipur has been a hub of jewelry craftsmanship since Jai Singh II founded the Rajasthani capital in 1727. Now the maharaja’s city is a global powerhouse of jewelry design, manufacture, and retail, fusing traditional Indian design with a Western aesthetic to reach the market through innovative online retail and television shopping networks.
A global powerhouse of jewelry design, manufacture, and retail....
Our second paper, by Karl Schmetzer, H. Albert Gilg, and Elisabeth Vaupel, explores an early frontier of gem synthesis. The authors detail Prof. Richard Nacken’s pioneering work and describe a previously unknown type of flux-grown synthetic emerald from the 1920s. Their paper is a valuable addition to the literature and a fascinating detective story, too.
Until recently, danburite was an underappreciated gem, but new sources are bringing this attractive yellow stone a larger audience. In our third paper, Le Thi-Thu Huong and her coauthors characterize a promising find of gem-quality danburite from Yen Bai Province, Vietnam.
Our fourth article returns to the emerald theme. We are proud to present a new wall chart illustrating some of the internal features of natural, treated, and synthetic emeralds. The chart, with contributions by inclusion specialists Nathan Renfro, John Koivula, Jonathan Muyal, and Shane McClure, provides a tantalizing look into the micro-world of emeralds.
Next, GIA field gemologists Wim Vertriest and Vincent Pardieu report on the latest developments in northern Mozambique, including the Montepuez ruby deposit and new discoveries of high-quality tourmaline and pink spinel.
I’d like to draw your attention to our three regular sections. Lab Notes includes entries on the largest near-colorless CVD-grown and HPHT-grown synthetic diamonds seen to date.
G&G Micro-World features a chalcedony containing more than a dozen clear hexagonal quartz windows, an iridescent ferropericlase inclusion in a diamond that might indicate a “superdeep” origin for its host, and a synthetic quartz crystal intentionally seeded with garnet inclusions.
Gem News International has something for everyone, including unusual tourmaline from Afghanistan, a new sapphire rush in Madagascar, and trapiche-type sapphire from Tasmania.
This issue also includes voting instructions for the Dr. Edward J. Gübelin Most Valuable Article Award. We had the best response ever to our 2015 reader ballot, so please do vote for your favorite 2016 articles. And don’t forget to check out our additional online media content for the Jaipur article and this issue’s Micro-World column.
Finally, we’d like to congratulate GIA postdoctoral research associate Evan Smith and his coauthors on their recent publication in Science—one of the world’s top academic journals. Their paper on large type IIa diamonds suggests that these rare gems grew within liquid metal deep in the earth’s mantle. It’s a valuable contribution to understanding the origin of these big stones, which we hope to tell in a future issue.
Thank you for all your support through 2016. We look forward to the upcoming year in gemology!
