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Sec. I, Ch. 4: Working of Precious Stones

Sec. I, Ch. 4: Working of Precious Stones Page of 366 Sec. I, Ch. 4: Working of Precious Stones Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
The Working of Precious Stones.
23
cultivated there than here. The English lapidaries are unrivalled in the cutting of coloured stones, but in the case of Diamonds, we must yield the palm to the Dutch. Of late years, however, the art of diamond-cutting has been revived here, and a stone can be cut in England to-day quite as well as in Holland.
When Portugal was at the height of her power, a very extensive trade in Precious Stones was carried on in that country by the Jews, and the lapidaries of Lisbon, who were also Jews, developed their art to a state of perfection never, perhaps, surpassed ; many of the old Lisbon-cut gems exhibiting a beauty of workmanship that taxes all the skill of our first lapidaries to rival. But the lapidary and merchant, however wealthy, were powerless to hold their own against religious fanaticism and bigotryj and the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal in the latter part of the sixteenth century, drove the lapidary and his art from Lisbon.
The exiled gem-merchants and lapidaries found an asylum in Holland, carrying their trade with them, in the same manner as the Huguenots brought silk-weaving to England. Since that time Amsterdam has been the great centre of the Diamond cutting trade, and remains so to the present day. It is said that out of 35,000 Jewish inhabitants of Amsterdam, about one-third are in some way or other connected with this business.
In India the stones are very imperfectly cut by the natives, often being quite irregular, and cut on one side only. The size and weight of the stones are valued there rather than the artistic cut. In workman's language the stones cut in India are " lumpy," and it is easier to cut a Diamond from the rough than to re-cut one of these lumpy stones.
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