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other priceless gemstones, by being so famous, exceptional and very
fashionable so as to be displayed and widely exhibited, are generally well protected. Their suspected and audacious thefts were prevented, and yet they captured the imagination of jewel hunters. Like Old Masters among paintings, frescos, icons and other works of art that morally achieved guarded status, so they became at once recognizable to the expert's eye. Their free trading is rendered harder and should not remain without any kind of control. For example, recently the illicit diamond buying act was passed that requires a special license or permit, allowing buying and selling only through competent and recognized connoisseurs or dealers. Now we turn to pearls, their virtues and properties. They hold the
place of the queen among the more important, inviable, unrivalled and prime jewels. Yet in a strict sense a pearl is not a gemstone or a mineral. It is a derivation from the excretion of a live marine animal, the mollusks and shellfish especially of the oyster types. In modern terminology, they are composed of about 10% conchiolin, an organic chemical substance, and about 85% of calcium carbonate called aragonite. Pearls generate from a particle of sand, a tiny parasitic work that
bores and penetrates through the oyster's shell, or other irritating bits of materials that stimulate the animal into trying to relieve itself of the annoyance, pushing against the shell's inside wall. It composes a relatively small or large deposit of layers of pearls in terbedded according to types, time and endurance. Therefore, a pearl's value depends upon its shape, size, place and origins. Pearls are highly priced because of their lustrous sheen, beauty and exquisite colour whether pure white, or tinged with pink, yellow, green, blue and other hues. Only the experts in jewellery are able to distinguish colours and
types among the .rarest of gemstones; emeralds, with their green and other colours and lustre; sapphires (termed in modern chemistry as an oxide of aluminum (Al2 93), not only in having blue violet colours but in others as well, in bluish, yellowish, gold and green tints; and the costly priceless topaz (termed aluminum silicate) with its brilliant lustre and shimmer in yellow, green, purple or even colourless hues, and which nonetheless have a tendency to cleavage. The latter two gems are related in origin and make up to beryllium, chrysoberyl and spinel. Turquoise is considered the "gem of victory", not only in war but
in peace as well. It is also worn as an omen and in helping to foretell future events and supposedly in protecting against the evil eye and witchcraft in many cultures, including the superstitious trends in the |
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