Tue 24 Jul 2007
You don’t have to spend a fortune making your store a celebration of natural wonder and wonders. “There are plenty of gems that look like a million dollars but only cost hundreds of dollars,” Epstein says. “Just because no one else carries them doesn’t mean you should ignore them too. Just the opposite. A jewelry store should be a theme park for natural wonders. It should connect people with the natural world and its magnificence just like a trip to Yosemite.”
Lapidary designer Jason Baskin works at such a store. It’s called The Gem Vault and it’s located in Flemington, New Jersey. An astonishing 90 percent of the store’s revenues are derived from sales of colored stone jewelry—70 percent of which is designed by Baskin and three other staff designers (two of whom, Kelly McCaughey and Sharon Curtiss, just won New Jersey Jewelers Association awards for their work). Baskin is on a perpetually famished lookout for exotic new gems to wow his customers. He thinks it’s absurd when jewelers balk at buying unknown gems because no one has ever heard of or asked for them.
“True, no one comes into your store and asks for andesine,” Baskin says. “But once they see its screaming orange-red, they’ll ask, ‘What is that?’ That’s where you, the jeweler, come in and answer the question. A good jeweler loads his store with gems that stun the eye and arouse curiosity. I can’t tell you how many times customers who ask about something that catches their eye wind up buying it.”
A visit to The Gem Vault is like a trip in a time machine that takes you a decade or so forward into the future of the American gemstone market. On one level, the store is a gemstone hall of fame for all recent inductees into, as well as all new candidates for, the mainstream. So there are a lot of regulars like tanzanite and tsavorite, and newcomers like Mali and spessartite garnet. Now Gem Vault owner William Brewer is betting on several new stunners: andesine, fluorite, kornerupine, prehnite, and sphene. He’s even got his eye on danburite.
Brewer is not alone in these hunches. But since fellow risk takers are still few and far between, Brewer and the relative handful of jewelers like him will once again reap most of the rewards from taking the first leaps of faith. Now that gems like prasiolite and kunzite are mainstream, here’s a sneak peek at the next six gem unknowns that are about to take America by storm. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
ANDESINE: RED ALERT
Dealer Robert Kane of Fine Gems International, Helena, Montana, still remembers when seeing, purely by chance, a large, luscious red plagioclase feldspar called andesine at the 2005 Tucson gem show. “I’ll be frank,” he says. “Discovering a new breed of labradorite was the last thing on my mind. But the stone simply forced itself upon me and I bought it just like that. I figure if it made that much of an impact on me, it would make that much of an impact on a jeweler.”
Most dealers and jewelers who carry andesine describe their first sighting of it in similar stun-gun terms. Andesine, at its best, has a distinctive ingot-hot orange-red that reminds you of those pictures you saw as a child of steel workers pouring molten metal in a mill. There is no red quite like it—not even that of its less intense but shimmering red oligoclase cousin, sunstone. That’s why, as we reported in our March issue, Jewelry Television in Knoxville, Tennessee, is buying tens of thousands of carats of this western China material at a clip to satisfy the demand for this gem among its 67 million viewership. The stone is telegenic.
But nothing matches seeing it in person. Baskin says its color has a kick he has seen only in Mexican fire opal. This is not the regal red of ruby, nor the pomegranate red of rubellite. This is glowing ember red. When set in platinum, palladium, or white gold, with some accent diamonds, its color erupts from the setting.
Since first stocking andesine in depth 18 months ago, The Gem Vault has made at least eight custom pieces—principally earrings and rings—that sold for between $500 and $2,200. With a hardness of 6 to 6-1/2, Baskin does not feel he is tempting fate by setting it in rings, although he cautions customers against the possible consequences of constant finger wear.
DANBURITE: WHITE NOISE
For nearly a decade, Columbus, Ohio, was the danburite capital of the world—thanks to designer and manufacturer Fran Frost of Gym Gems, who created a flourishing market for this white sparkler found today mostly in Mexico. At the time Frost first put danburite on the mid-American map, circa 1995, she was working for a jewelry store called What On Earth that specialized in affordable, often exotic gems.
“It was a word-of-mouth thing,” she says. “I sold an engagement ring and matching pair of earrings featuring 1 carat danburites to someone who couldn’t afford diamonds of significance but didn’t want a man-made stone like cubic zirconia. That left me with a choice between colorless sapphire and danburite. Given danburite’s bargain price and rarity, it just seemed the perfect alternative in this situation.”
When the customer started wearing her danburite earrings to the office, other women noticed what they thought were sizeable diamonds and, well, mistaken identity sparked a danburite rush. Soon this calcium boro-silicate became a local success as a natural diamond substitute. Until the store where she worked went out of business at the end of 2005, Frost’s regular orders of danburite accounted for at least 50 percent of her sole supplier’s business in the gem. “I sent hundreds of stones to Fran and always replenished my inventory with her in mind,” says Dudley Blauwet of Blauwet Gems, Louisville, Colorado.
Frost shrewdly played up the fact that danburite was an American stone, named after the town of Danbury, Connecticut, where it was discovered in 1880. Of course, the material she sold came from Mexico where it is relatively abundant—or, at least, plentiful enough to keep Columbus well stocked. Madagascar is also a present-day source but its material tends to be slightly brown. Burma is an occasional source as well.
Danburite makes a lot of sense as a colorless stone, although occasionally a faint tinge of pink adds to its attractiveness. With a hardness of 7, it is relatively durable. Last but not least, it is commonly available in sizes from 5 to 10 carats, and priced between $5 and $25 per carat. That’s a lot of natural diamond-like spectacle for very little money.
FLUORITE: THE SOFT SELL
There are some dealers who think it ill-advised, if not irresponsible, to use fluorite—also known as fluorspar—in jewelry. “As beautiful as fluorite is, it illustrates the point that beauty alone is not enough to make a mineral a gem,” says a dealer who asks not to be named.
Known for at least 1,500 years, principally in England which was long its chief source, this old softie is plagued with a hardness of 4 and worrisome cleavage. So it must be set and worn with great care and is sensibly restricted to pendant use among those few jewelers we found brave enough to offer it. For centuries its banded English variety was known primarily as a carving material, suitable for bowls and vases.
At this point, you may be ready to ask, why choose fluorite at all? It’s the color. Although fluorite occurs in an enviably wide spectrum of hues, it is its ravishing green that does most of the missionary work on behalf of this calcium fluoride. Again and again, we are told that it reminds total strangers to the breed of fine emerald.
Sometimes those strangers are dealers like Beny Aviram of Spark Creations, a New York firm known for taking chances with gems that strike its fancy. The moment he saw his first fluorite—a 20-plus carat green glory—he knew it was destined for use in his jewelry. “I saw a spectacular green stone at a gem show that was as beautiful as any emerald,” Aviram says. “Once I learned it was fluorite and that there were drawbacks to using it, I decided that pendants would be a safe way to allow consumers to wear this fabulous gem.”
Beauty, affordability, and its frequent availability in very large sizes also make fluorite well worth the gamble for Baskin. The Gem Vault has already offered the gem in bead and briolette bracelets and necklaces, selling for $200 and $600, and has branched out into faceted stones. Although fluorite comes from many localities and is often as prized for its pinks as its greens, Baskin is currently sticking with New Hampshire green material. “Its clarity is crystal clear and its color is superior,” he says. Likewise designer Jeff Mazza of the Mazza Company, Baldwin, New York, who is using New Hampshire material although some “intense purple-blue” stones from Pakistan have caught his eye.
KORNERUPINE: MIX MASTER
Kornerupine (pronounced korner-roo-peen) is a gem known for its color blends rather than its individual shades. Dallas designer Margaret Cannon Lewis depends on its strong pleochroism to make constant color shifts between blue-green and purple—a function of both cutting and lighting. “This is really best thought of as a phenomenon stone,” she says.
Because kornerupine is pleochroic, some enthusiasts love it for its remarkable ability to mix colors all at once and produce simultaneous multi-hues. Others prefer it to oscillate between its distinctive blue-green and purple poles. But don’t get the wrong idea. This is not a color-change gem like alexandrite. It is more of a color-shift gem like andalusite.
Most of the current world supply of kornerupine comes from Tanzania, and is rarely seen in finished stones above 1-1/4 carats. Blauwet says that stones under 1 carat will cost around $100 and double in price once over the 1 carat mark.
Before its discovery in east Africa in the 1960s, kornerupine was mostly found in Sri Lanka and had a reputation as a sage-green stone. No wonder it was rarely used in jewelry despite a hardness of 6-1/2. Tanzania has given the gem a better color identity and thus a whole new lease on life.
PREHNITE: SPRING FEVER
As the sudden popularity of prasiolite confirms, pastel greens have become a fashion gem staple. But some shy away from this green quartz because they suspect it is irradiated and therefore not truly, or wholly, natural. Is there an alternative all-natural gem that gives the same soft, younger-than-springtime, budget green?
Yes. It’s called prehnite and European designers have been using it for the past few years. Now Americans are catching the fever, especially since a major find of green and bluish-green stones in Mali. Prior prehnites, most from Australia, were more yellowish. Mali’s stones more easily comply with this year’s light-green dress code.
Frequent users of prehnite (named after its South African discoverer, Colonel Hendrik von Prehn) laud the stone for its velvety translucence which endear it to cabochon cutting. Recently, however, designers like Mazza have been using snappy stones with checkerboard faceting. One of his customers, Pat Zambuto, owner of Cedar Chest Fine Jewelry, Sanibel Island, Florida, says prehnite is the perfect Florida gem because it has “the feel of water and coastal colors.” Up north in New Jersey where beautiful prehnite is often found, Baskin sees the same seashore appeal in this gem, which may explain why it is the state gem. But we suspect it would be just as welcome farther inland where its green can just as easily evoke prairies and plains.
With hardness around 6-1/2, prehnite’s color and properties allow it to serve as a ring stone and, once in a while, a carving substitute for nephrite jade. At $6 to $12 per carat for faceted stones, the gem invites jeweler curiosity.
SPHENE: FIRE BREATHER
When greenish-yellow sphene with spunky flecks of fire from Madagascar hit the American market around 2000, designers went into euphoria. Now better material with orangey body color and high-def dispersion from Pakistan is driving manufacturers even wilder. Its chunky broad-flash fire reminds devotees of everything from top-grade opal to spectacular old mine-cut diamonds. “The dispersion is the chief selling point,” says Baskin. “I’ve never seen sphene this good.” Blauwet agrees, “The Pakistani material seemed less silky and more sharp.”
This may be due to cutting. Importers like Blauwet are satisfying themselves with 3 to 5 percent yields from the rough so that their squeaky-clean, precision cut stones will shine all the more brightly without inclusions to impede light. Mindful of this gem’s 5-1/2 hardness, The Gem Vault has produced mostly sphene pendants and earrings. Nevertheless, a recent three-stone ring fetched $800.
At present, prices for Pakistani sphene generally run around $75 to $100 per carat but outstanding stones fetch considerably over $200 per carat. If, as Blauwet was recently informed, rival tribes are battling for control of the deposit, prices could soar as supplies are disrupted or, worse, dry up completely. “I’ve got my fingers crossed,” he says, “but Pakistan is never a bed of roses.”
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