GRINMOR TECH INC.

The majority of women like jewellery, Many men do as well, but they tend to prefer gadgets and watches. In many countries women store their wealth in jewellery as exemplified by the Fifties song “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”. Asian women in particular accumulate gold.

However, precious stones and precious metals are generally perceived to be very valuable. Leaving the value of the piece aside, most people have a favourite colour.

Some prefer yellow gold, others prefer white. Some prefer the clarity and brilliance of diamonds, while others prefer aquamarine, turquoise of green.

In fact, high-quality green gems are among the most expensive of all gemstones including diamonds. Emeralds are the most costly green gemstones weight for weight.

Gemstones are created underground at great pressures and they obtain their colours from the minerals involved in their composition. Gemstones are generally quite hard, because they were fashioned under great pressure.

In olden times, many people believed that gemstones had magical properties. The magical property attributed to emerald was the restoration of vision and the curing of eye illnesses.

In fact, emeralds are a kind of beryl and derive their green colour from the element chromium or sometimes vanadium. Emeralds have a hardness of seven to eight; diamonds are the hardest at 10 on the Mohs Scale.

However, emerald has a great number of inclusions (or faults), so it will shatter fairly easily. These inclusions give emeralds their typical fuzzy look.Nevertheless, the best emeralds are those that have a clear, transparent, even colour of green all the way through.

Weight for weight, an emerald of high quality is more valuable than a diamond of similar quality, which amazes most people. However, good diamonds are easier to find than decent emeralds and hence the difference in price.

Become very suspicious of stones that are called ‘something’ emeralds like Lithia emeralds or oriental emeralds. These are usually cheaper gemstones which are referred to as emeralds in order to boost their value. These stones are not emeralds and not worth much in comparison.

Because of the cost of real emeralds, many ‘cheap emeralds’ are either not emeralds at all or are very poor specimens that are being held together by resin. It is very difficult for a greenhorn to know the difference between the good and the bad, which makes it important to purchase from a reputable jeweller or dealer.

Emeralds have been popular since the times of the pharaohs and there are emerald mines in Egypt. There are also emerald mines in Siberia, Brazil, Zambia, Pakistan, South Africa, India and Australia amongst other places.

In spite of the fact that there seems to be many sources of emeralds, decent quality gemstones are still difficult to get hold of at a good price. However, there are no equivalents to emerald, so if you like the best, you can expect to pay handsomely for it.

As with all costly gemstones, you ought to get a signed certificate of weight and quality when you purchase an emerald.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, and is now concerned with Amber in Poland. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Jewellry and Watches.

Blue and green are two of the most popular colours with people and with nature – the sea, rivers, the sky and plants are all green or blue or turquoise, a greeny-blue. Turquoise is the colour of the open sea. It is not a hard colour to like and it fits into most colour schemes.

Turquoise is not a especially rare gemstone, but it is rare in its finest state. It is mined in many countries including the USA, Iran, India and China. The word turquoise derives from an old French word for Turkey or Turkish, because it was first imported into Europe from Iranian or Persian mines via Turkey.

Turquoise is easily smashed and is only slightly stronger than glass, having a hardness of 6. Turquoise is one of the oldest mined gemstones and still, most of the world’s mines are small and hand-operated.

Some of the Iranian mines are 2,000 years old and still being worked. However, the oldest mines are on the Sinai Peninsular and they are known to be at least 3,000 years old as they were worked in the era of the pharaohs.

The colour varies through greens and blues because of the existence or minerals. If there is more copper present the stone will be bluer and if there is aluminium or iron, it will be greener.

Iranian turquoise is some the best quality in the world and is used mainly in the jewelery industry. Turquoise from some other places, like the south-western states of America, is of lower grade and is too chalky and powdery for this use.

Regrettably, chemists have discovered ways to enhance this gemstone, so that unless you are an expert or buying from a reliable source, you could easily end up purchasing poor grade turquoise that has been treated. This is the case with other gemstones too.

Some of the tricks that they get up to are:

Chemicals can be applied to intensify the natural colour of the gem

Resin can be soaked into the pores of porous, friable, low-grade turquoise to ‘stabilize’ it – ie stop it flaking and falling apart.

Completely untreated, natural turquoise of pleasing appearance is very rare and so very expensive. It would be very hard to impossible for a layman to detect whether a stone has been treated or not, but you are not likely ever to come across any.

Whatever, quality of turquoise you have, you will have to look after it because it is quite soft, easily scratched and fairly easily crushed to powder.

Therefore, do not leave it to rattle about in your bag and store it wrapped on its own in a cool, dark box. Extremes of temperature may harm it as well. Turquoise is naturally porous, even if it has been drenched in resin, so do not permit oils or perfumes to soak into it.

If you have to wash a turquoise, you will need nothing but a soft fabric and warm, but not hot, water. Dry the stone right away after washing with a second soft duster. Be careful not to score the surface with the dirt that you are cleaning off.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of subjects, and is now concerned with Baby Birthstones. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Jewellry and Watches.