An Introduction to the Historic Role of Gems and Jewelry

FROM the earliest ages jewels have powerfully attracted mankind, and the treatment of precious stones and the precious metals in which they are set, often serves as important evidence, not only concerning the art of early times and peoples, but also concerning their manners and customs. Jewels have been the gifts and ransoms of kings, the causes of devastating wars, of the overthrow of dynasties, of regicides, of notorious thefts, and of innumerable crimes of violence. The known history of some existent famous gems covers more years than the story of some modern nations. Around the flashing Kohinoor and its compeers cluster world-famous legends, not less fascinating to the general reader who loves the strange and romantic, than to the antiquary or the historian or the scientist. These tales of fact or fiction are fascinating in part, because they associate with the gems fair women whose names have become synonymous with whatever is beautiful and beguiling in the sex. In the mind of the lowest savage, as in the thought of man in his highest degree of civilisation, personal adornment has always occupied a prominent place, and for such adornment gems are most prized. The symbolism and sentiment of the precious and semi-precious stones, and precious metals, permeate literature. Jewels have their place in the descriptions of heaven in the sacred writings of almost every people that has attained to a written language.

So wide and so interesting is the subject of precious stones and precious metals, their artistic treatment apart and combined, their importance in society, commerce, and the arts, their part in the wealth of individuals and nations, that it is in a high degree remarkable that, comparatively speaking, so few books have been written about them.

Geology and mineralogy are the names of the sciences that concern themselves with minerals--among them gems--in the rough; metallurgy is the name of the science that has to do with metals; "gemology" is a word sometimes used to describe the branch of art or of the crafts that deals with gems which have passed through the hands of the diamond cutter or the lapidary. The general reader resents the disposition of scientific writers to indulge in technical terminology, though the steady development of popular interest in pure science has in some measure reconciled the reading masses to a sparing and judicious use of the technical terms of specialists.

Scientific hobbies are nowadays common; some take to mineralogy, some to botany, some to entomology. So far as popularity is concerned, the scientific study of gems is, as compared with the studies above named, at a disadvantage. The novice adventuring into the study of nature is apt to be attracted by life and action, and his attention won by the forms that are most beautiful, as birds, butterflies, or wildflowers. Sometimes the adaptability of specimens to photography weighs heavily in the scale of choice, or, perhaps, the ease with which they can be preserved with their natural brilliancy of colouring as in the case of moths, beetles, or the leaves of forest trees. The fascination of penetrating a realm difficult and dreaded, as the reptile kingdom, or of gaining new facts about the life histories of powerful or carnivorous wild beasts proves most potent to some investigators. Geology allures some with its prospecting rambles and the employment found in classifying and installing specimens for exhibition.

The high intrinsic value of diamonds and other precious stones and of precious metals and of all but the least valuable of semi-precious stones, in the rough or in ore, prohibits, for most of us, the possession of representative groups of specimens, and men are not apt to interest themselves deeply in subjects that are difficult of access for the student and observer. This, no doubt, is why the sciences and the arts and crafts immediately concerned with precious stones and their settings can hardly be called popular. Such being the case, there is certainly a place for a book on gems that will be of substantial value to the practical dealer in jewels, to the designer of settings for precious stones, and to the general public who, for a hundred different reasons, are curious in regard to the subjects of which the work treats. It is the author's hope that the present volume will meet the needs of the various classes of readers above referred to, and will at the same time interest them and give them pleasure.

And here the author would lay strong emphasis on one point, namely, that the average jewel merchant or salesman is badly handicapped in his desire to inform himself regarding "gemology," by the lack of reliable and easily accessible books concerned with matters of the first interest to him. There are, to be sure, books, but they are most of them either too technical or too costly. The jewelry trade has its journals, and the best of these offer valuable special information concerning the science and art of gems and jewelry; but, nevertheless, the business man lacks authoritative books which can be understood by readers not possessed of a scientific education. The desire for a special, yet not too technical, literature often finds a voice in the jewellers' trade journals. For instance, in The National Jeweller and Optician of April, 1908, there is this complaint: "I know men in the hardware and chemical and other lines who have shelves of interesting books about their lines of commerce right at their hands. This is nowhere the case in our downtown jewelry district. In fact, no trade is poorer in books on the trade than the jewelry and silver and art-metal trades." And in the same issue the complaint is repeated. "It is both astonishing and disappointing," says the journal in question, "that a craft of such antiquity and interest as that of jewelry should have virtually no distinctive literature."