Conversations

An older gentleman walked into our store, introduced himself and then started to talk about himself.  “I lost my dog a few weeks ago,” he said.  “She was my pal for 17 years.  She went everywhere with me.”  Having lost a 17 year old pet myself just before Valentine’s Day, I commiserated with him.   He turned to me and went on, “You know my wife,” he gave me her name and went on to say, “She’s in here all the time.   We’ve kind of drifted apart over the last few years and I want to tell her how much I love her still.  I want to buy her a ring.  We didn’t have any money when we first were married, so I couldn’t afford one.  I want to buy her a ring today.”  We had to talk a little more.  I asked him what her day was like.  “She doesn’t work.  She likes to cook a lot.”  I asked him to tell me a little more about her and he did the best he could.  “She isn’t a jewelry person.  She doesn’t really like fancy things.”  Somehow that didn’t quite fit with the notion that “She’s in here all the time;” but it was clear that the man was troubled about his inability to express his feelings for her to his wife.  Listening to him I’d come to the conclusion that when he said “a ring” there was only one ring on his mind, a diamond ring.  Beyond that, it was clear that the death of his pet had him reviewing all of his emotional attachments and he’d come to believe that recently he’d not invested enough of himself in her; he hadn’t made it clear just how much he loved her.  So I decided that there was only one kind of ring that would convey his message to her, a diamond wedding ring.  I showed him two.   Pointing to one of them, he said, “That looks more like her.”  Then he pulled out a cashier’s check he’d had prepared and gave me a credit card for the balance.  We gift wrapped it; and since I’ve not seen either him nor her since, I guess his message was loud and clear.

As I write, Kathy is in the middle of another conversation.  One of her clients has been trying to pick out exactly the right diamond to propose with.   While it has become clear to him that we just won’t sell “ugly” diamonds, it has also become clear to him that he wants the diamond he gives her to make a statement.   While the color of the diamond has some importance for him, its “purity” is of paramount importance.  As a sometimes eavesdropper, I am pretty sure he wants the diamond he selects to speak for him, to tell her how rare she is and how important she is to him.   So he has only been interested in extremely rare diamonds, those that have been laboratory graded “internally flawless”.   As Kathy is good at understanding us inarticulate men, she seems to understand his needs; and with the diamond settled, she’s now in pursuit of the ring itself.  He has told Kathy that the woman he will propose to has an eye for detail, so the search has become focused on a ring that is both detailed and “uncommon”.  In a word, the ring has to be rare as well.   The design must be striking, the small diamonds in it must match the center diamond he has chosen and it must be platinum. 

The need to speak with jewelry isn’t that uncommon.  Two weeks ago a different man walked into our store and said to Kathy, “I need an ‘I’m sorry gift’”.   She asked, “A big ‘I’m sorry’ or a little ‘I’m sorry’?   “A  big one,” he answered; so Kathy interviewed him about her (not his sin) in order to make sure the gift would be appropriate to the woman receiving it.  Fifteen minutes later he’d made his selection and left.  The point of these three stories?  Fine jewelry does “talk”.  It speaks for us when words alone are too weak, when only clear and understandable action will have the durable emotional content we need in our conversations with those we love. 

All three men purchased one of our hand selected diamonds.  Its perfect beauty said it all.  Think about it.  When you give someone a diamond of clear recognizable beauty it thrills all who see it.   That’s a strong statement - an “I love you” louder than the loudest shout, yet you won’t have to say a word.  So let our diamonds and fine diamond Jewelry do the talking for you.  Check out our collection on line at hurstsberwynjewelers.com; then come in and let us help you fine tune the statement you want to make.  Phone us at 708.788.0880 for our hours and any other information you may need; after all, we’re not the common jeweler

THE HOLE IN THE MIDDLE OF GRANDMA’S DIAMOND

If not grandma’s, then some other diamond you’ve seen; and perhaps you’ve wondered why it was there.  The answer is simple; and I first heard it in a story told by a much older acquaintance.  In the early 1920s he was about 12 years old; and one day his father brought him along to “help” him buy his mother a diamond ring at a jeweler in his home town, Cincinnati.  The jeweler showed his father several diamonds and one of them was unique by virtue of what appeared to be a hole in its center.  When the youth asked about the “hole”, the jeweler replied that there was no hole, that he was looking through the diamond’s culet and its purpose was to let light into the diamond.  Apparently this answer satisfied both the youth and his father as the diamond was purchased and became a treasured family heirloom.  The youth of that time became a man, a father, a grandfather, a great grandfather and passed away about fifteen years ago; and throughout the several years I knew him, I never felt the need to give him the rest of the answer about the hole in his mother’s diamond.  Here it is now.  

It’s true that the diamond’s culet, the flat cut at the diamond’s pointed bottom, was so large in order to let light into it.  Without it, given the diamond’s other poor proportions, it would have looked dark and lacked brilliance.  In the trade, such diamonds are often called “nail-heads”.  Cut to better proportions, the diamond would have had a much smaller, perhaps invisible, culet and it would have been brighter; but it would have weighed less, and weight sells.  Indeed, weight was, and is, so obviously important to the average diamond buyer that for more than a century most diamond cutters have been paid for the weight they retain from the rough while cutting and polishing a diamond.  Let beauty take the hindmost!  Fancy diamond cuts; that is, shapes other than the round brilliant cut?  Usually they have originated out of a desire to save weight from the rough. 

Take the marquise for example.  It was developed in 18th century France (to save weight) and originally named the “navette”.  Navette, however, just had no marketing pizzaz; so when Louis XV gave one to his mistress, the French jewelers seized on the opportunity.  The humble navette became the prestigious “marquise”, a name associated with a noble rank less than a duke but greater than a count.  Sales of diamond navettes, oops, make that diamond marquise, to the courtiers at Versailles soared!  Don’t chuckle over that too quickly.  In our own time a square, brilliant cut diamond (again developed as a way to save the rough’s weight when cutting it) has been very successfully marketed as the “princess cut”; and everyone knows a princess is more important than a marquise.  

It’s more brilliant than and sparkles more than the older square cut diamonds that preceded it; and since it is less wasteful to cut than an ideally proportioned round, brilliant cut diamond, it is usually considerably cheaper than a round brilliant cut of exactly the same weight, color and clarity.  Nothing is free, however; the princess cut sacrifices brilliance and the appearance of size for its weight.  Yes, even though you may find princess cuts out there with laboratory reports that describe their cutting as “Ideal”; none of them is as brilliant as the best cut round diamond.   Indeed, at this writing the very most beautifully cut princess cuts generally return only 62% of the light that enters them to the viewer’s eyes.  By contrast, a round brilliant cut diamond cut to the very highest standards that may currently be achieved returns a bit more than 98%.  This is tremendously important as light performance is the heart and soul of the diamond “shine” beloved by diamond fanciers.   Don’t be confused by the term “ideal”.  It is relative to the style of the cut and cannot be meaningfully used to compare the light performance of two different diamond cutting plans.    My word of advice on buying a diamond?   Don’t buy one without looking at it; I won’t.  Oh!  If you have grandma’s diamond and you don’t like the “hole” in it, bring it in and we’ll re-cut it for maximum beauty.

There are square and modified square shapes on the market that have more sparkle than a princess cut; so if it’s a square you must have, come see us.  We’ll lead you to brilliance brilliantly.  In diamonds, cutting equates directly to beauty; and  we insist on diamonds cut for beauty.   Think about that.  Diamond color and clarity - rarity factors that affect price - can seldom be seen in any meaningful sense outside of the laboratory; while perfection in cut is immediately obvious to everyone.  There is no choice.  If you want to pay her the greatest compliment and words fail you, there is no better way to say, “I love you,” than with a gift of perfect beauty.    She’ll love and treasure it forever!   We’re Hursts’ Berwyn Jewelers, an uncommon jeweler.  Check us out on line at hurstsberwynjewelers.com; then phone us at 708.788.0880 for an appointment that will answer your desires perfectly.

Jewelry Allergy

When we were in Las Vegas (attending trade shows) a couple of weeks ago part of our mission was to find hypoallergenic earring posts and a relatively inexpensive hypoallergenic clasp for a pearl bracelet.  The search proved harder than it first appeared to be.  In large measure this probably stems from the fact that the metals used in jewelry are largely hypoallergenic.  This doesn’t mean that they are absolutely hypoallergenic; in the absence of any U.S. Government standards for the term, the expression ‘hypoallergenic’ has come to rest on a broad understanding that a metal called hypoallergenic is not likely to cause an allergic reaction.  In other words, most people will not be allergic to it, but some may.  Spare your indignation if you believe you suffer from a metal allergy and read on.

In my experience, most people who complain of metal allergies have, in fact, reacted to soap built up on earrings or inside rings or chains.  If you are not up on your chemistry, allow me to explain how this may be so.  Virtually all soaps are alkalis; that is, they are soluble bases.  They clean your skin by attacking it, literally ‘burning off’ the top layer.  If you find this hard to believe, just look at a classic formula for ‘castile soap’; it’s primary ingredients are olive oil and sodium carbonate, a powerful caustic.  In fact, taxidermists use sodium carbonate added to boiling water to remove flesh from the skull or bones of an animal to create an educational display.  On a smaller scale, water or perspiration can activate the soap film on a piece of jewelry into a flesh eating demon.  So if you think you have a metal allergy, the first thing to do is to eliminate soap from the equation; that is, have the jewelry you are suspicious of professionally cleaned of all soap residue.  Once soap has been eliminated you can look for a classic indicator for a metal allergy, corrosion.

Green corrosion on a piece of jewelry, usually sterling silver, is almost always indicative of a reaction to nickel.  Nickel shows such significant chemical activity as to be an allergen for many people; but interestingly enough its presence on silver jewelry rests on this chemical activity.  The common silver alloy, sterling silver, is 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper; and when it is exposed to sulfur (a very common part of industrial air pollution) it discolors.  To prevent this, it has become fairly common for many jewelry makers to rhodium plate their sterling silver production.  Rhodium, a very ‘white’ member of the platinum family of metals, is hypoallergenic - and very expensive.  To complicate using it further, its relatively inert character makes it difficult to get a good rhodium plate on silver.  Enter nickel.  Owing to its chemical activity, it is easy to apply a very thin and smooth nickel plate over silver; but both its activity and its off white color make it unattractive to leave it at this.  Fortunately, nickel loves rhodium; so the next step in production is to plate the piece with rhodium thus giving it a beautiful silvery finish that will not discolor.    However the rhodium plate is only a few thousands of an inch thick; so a scratch through it will expose skin to nickel and create the possibility of an allergic reaction.  

Between soap and nickel, this accounts for most presumed jewelry allergies; this brings me back to our search for earring posts and a pearl clasp.  Both clients have proven allergies to nickel, either in its ‘raw’ form or when alloyed with gold; unfortunately nickel is the common whitening agent in white gold alloy.  Since there were some real price constraints on the posts, we sought palladium posts (palladium is another, less costly, hypoallergenic member of the platinum family); but couldn’t find any.  We had to rethink the problem.  The customer wanted Tahitian black pearl earrings; so we decided to shop the pearls first.  If we could buy nice pearls reasonably enough, we could have the earrings made with platinum (hypoallergenic) posts.  With careful shopping we succeeded.  Interestingly enough, the pearl bracelet clasp posed a greater problem.  Again we were up against price constraints The woman needs a white metal clasp that is free of nickel.  This eliminated white gold alloys and most commercially available sterling silver.  Platinum was available, but it exceeded her budget.  So we wandered the Las Vegas Jewelry Show looking for raw (unplated) silver; and it was harder to find than we had imagined.  Finally we were able to make a connection with a manufacturer who, at relatively reasonable prices, was willing to sell us a sterling silver ‘semi-finished’ clasp - ‘semi-finished’ meaning unpolished and unplated.  With a sense of relief, we went on with the rest of our business.

If you’ve not noticed, there is more than one point to this story.  The first is that complaints about jewelry metals must be carefully considered to see if they are valid.  The second is that we take our clients’ needs very seriously.  So if you’re in the market for a superb piece of jewelry, you really need to come see us.  We hand select our diamonds for exceptional beauty and we demand the very best in jewelry manufacture - including the many custom pieces we make each month.  Check out our website for a sense of our style (http://www.hurstsberwynjewelers.com/); then phone us at 708.788.0880 for an appointment to select or design the ring, necklace or earrings of your dreams.  We’re Hursts’ Berwyn Jewelers, not a common jeweler.

Jains and Jewelry

Kathy and I got back from the big Las Vegas jewelry shows last night; and as has become usual, we spent a fair amount of time with a young woman of Indian extraction and a practicing Jain.   If you are not acute to Janism (and I’m certainly no authority), it’s worth noting the  values espoused by them.   In a world of violent extremism, Jainism, a strict and democratic splinter of mainstream Hinduism, prescribes non-violence.  Naturally, this makes them vegetarians; and since dining on root vegetables ‘kills‘ the plant, strict Jains avoid things like potatoes and carrots.  But I digress.   

Jains are urged to follow a philosophy of self-effort in conquering one’s inner demons.  While this might seem rather esoteric, the brass tacks of their business ethics are not.  Jainism encourages close family ties, cooperation with others and strict business ethics; and these have facilitated their entry into the world of diamonds.  In fact, though they number only about 5 million, they’ve become quite influential in the world of jewelry as a whole.   At its heart, the jewelry business, particularly the diamond business, functions on an understood system of trust.  A reputation for integrity is all; and Jains have become recognized for this. 

Though historic India was the first important source of diamonds, most of India’s diamond mines were played out by 1750.  Nonetheless, consumer demand  persisted there; but it was not until the discovery of diamonds in South Africa (1867) that the demand could be met.   The Jains were not far behind.  In 1909 a small group of Jain merchants in Palanpur, India, entered the jewelry business as importers of cut and polished diamonds.  Over time, the international diamond business developed confidence in India’s Jain merchants; and their close family ties and cooperative habits helped them to prosper in India’s domestic diamond business.  After 1947 (the year India became independent), India’s new government, anxious not to lose foreign exchange, attempted to discourage the importation of luxury goods by taxing it heavily.  Jain diamond merchants countered by importing rough diamonds and cutting them (gem cutting in India was already a long established art).  The government found this agreeable; but to the dismay of both the new Jain cutting firms and the Indian government, Indians started to horde diamonds as a hedge against inflation.  Government intervention soon followed.

Faced with Government opposition to their new industry, in 1955 the Palanpur diamond cutters made a creative overture to the government.  They proposed the “Replenishment Scheme”.   The heart of their proposal was a commitment to import rough diamonds and cut and polish them for export, only. To make it most attractive to government, they also proposed that the government would regulate mandated increases in value of their diamonds after cutting.  As this would both create jobs and benefit India’s balance of payments, the Government readily agreed.

Despite this victory, the Palanpuris were still faced with the fact that the tightly knit diamond business was concentrated in Belgium.  Practically speaking, this meant that rough would be hard to get, particularly high quality rough.   Palanpur’s cutters usually had to make do with such very poor quality material that they  complained, “. . . these are industrial and industrial sand.”  In fact, the yield from such inferior rough was quite poor.  Typically more than 83% of their rough weight was lost in cutting; but the Palanpuris persevered.  Their high ethical standards eventually brought them more and better rough; and then the monolithic character of the diamond business was broken.  Dissatisfied with the old DeBeers monopoly’s sales of their rough material, Rio Tinto, majority owner of Australia’s Argyle diamond mine, offered India’s cutters as much rough as they could cut.  Again, most of the rough was of poor quality (Argyle’s rough is mostly dark and included); but the deal provided the stepping stone that India’s diamond cutters needed to establish themselves in the world market.  Between low labor costs and modern equipment India’s diamond cutting business began to soar.  While in 1966 India accounted for about 6% of the world’s polished diamond production, today it accounts for about 92%!  And while most of India’s production is in small diamonds (smaller than 1/5 of a carat), the quality of Indian cut diamonds continues to grow.

As for us, here at Hursts’ Berwyn Jewelers, the young woman we were doing business with is quite acute to fashion.  As a result, some of her designs have been seen ‘on the red carpet’ at entertainment industry awards.  Naturally, we avail ourselves of her talents; and while we have a nice representation of her work currently ‘in house’, she’ll be making some great rings and earrings for us for our fall collection.  Since many are hand made, it may take a while; but when you come see the collection it will be even more worth the time and money that it is now.  She and her designs are a perfect for us as we’re not the common jeweler.  You can view part of our collection on line at hurstsberwynjewelers.com; and then, appetite whetted and in need of a purchase, you can phone us at 708.788.0880 for an appointment.  We look forward to seeing you and sharing our passion for interesting jewelry with you