ZD395 Jeweller (July 2013)
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July 2013 / Volume 22 / No. 5 Gem-A’s new home An emerald rainbow The lottery that wasn’t CHINA | GEMS {ᇗ ݛ Зᄞᇅ ൎ From gemology to jewelry industry ϻⴠ႓ݝ⤍ϔ͇ From manufacturers to retailers ϻݣ䕍ੳݝ䰣ਜ਼ੳ From the hottest trends to greatest inspirations. ϻᰭ☚䬕⮱䊸߬ݝᰭь๔⮱▢ᙌ γ㼐ϔ͇ߕᔮ ᢹᤎ⠙უ䬨 Ȩ͚పⴠȩ͇̀㼐Ჽ ᱰ༮ࣾጰ Get To Know China Jewelry Industry In a Way Only CHINA GEMS Can Deliver ౝ౭喟 ࡄϙጯ͉ࡧࡄ̶⣜͉䌜 36 ADD: Rm.2217, Tower C,त⣜⤰䉥ᭀ͚ᓰ Beijing Global Trade Center, CᏔ 䗛㑃喟 2217 100013ბ Dongcheng District,36 North Beijing, Third RingChina, Road 100013 East, TEL : 8610 5827 6034 | 8610 5827 6035 FAX: 8610 5827 6037 www.chinagemsmag.com Gems&Jewellery / July 2013 Editorial Gems&Jewellery Collecting Sales July 13 There seems to be a division in some people’s minds between ‘commercial’ gems and ‘collectors’ gems. If there really is such a distinction then, to use an gem-industry in-joke, Contents it might depend on whether you are buying or selling. Or, to use another well-worn expression, it may depend on what you mean by ‘collecting’. The wonderful gemstones in the famous American-based ‘Somewhere in the Rainbow’ collection (come to the Gem-A 4 Conference this year to learn more) and the fabulous gems and jewellery exhibited at the recent Masterpiece Exhibition in London (see page 7) are perhaps what many people think of when collectors’ gems are mentioned. There are also the collectors, many of them Gem-A Members and graduates, who collect fine or unusual examples of gems, rough or cut, at more affordable prices. If you know what you are doing, rare and interesting is not Gem-A News / Calendar necessarily synonymous with expensive. However, most would probably not associate the average gems set in the average jewellery in the average high street jewellery shop with 6 ‘collecting’. But perhaps jewellers need to rethink? A few days ago Gem-A representatives, including CEO James Riley and I, took part in the 2013 Gem Lovers’ Conference held by Jewelry Television (JTV) in Knoxville, USA. This event attracts a large number of JTV customers, the vast majority of whom consider themselves Gem News collectors — whether they have spent a few hundred dollars with JTV or a few hundred thousand (and yes there are some of those). They collect gems and gem-set jewellery, either to wear or just to admire and show off. Talking to these buyers made it evident that they 7 shared passion, pride and interest in their purchases. If you sell gems or gem-set jewellery anywhere — it doesn’t matter if it is at Masterpiece, in the high street, on the internet, in a gem show or from your office — you can join the collectors’ market. If you have knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, gems, your customers can become in their minds — and in yours News & Reviews — collectors. In a sense you can start collecting collectors. That is why a good familiarity with gemstones is one of the best ways to ensure success in the jewellery market today. 10 Gem-A education, from one-day workshops to full courses, has a very practical value. Jack Ogden Cover Picture Gem-A’s new headquarters at 21 Ely Place, London. Photo by Jack Ogden. Around the Trade Gems and Minerals 13 Published by Editor July 2013 / Volume 22 / No. 5 Jack Ogden Hands-on Gemmology 14 The Gemmological Association of Great Britain (Gem-A) Advisory Board 21 Ely Place, London EC1N 6TD Mary Burland, Roger Harding, Gems and Jewellery t: +44 (0)20 7404 3334 Harry Levy and James Riley History 20 f: +44 (0)20 7404 8843 Design and Production e: [email protected] Zest Design +44 (0)20 7864 1504 w: www.gem-a.com Stone Scoop 22 Any opinions expressed in Gems&Jewellery are Registered charity no. 1109555 understood to be the views of the contributors Gem-A’s new home Copyright 2013 ISSN 1746-8043 and not necessarily of the publishers. An emerald rainbow The lottery that wasn’t Advertising For mediapack and advertising rates please contact Ian Francis at the National Association of Goldsmiths on tel: +44 (0)20 7613 4445 or email him at: [email protected] Page 3 Gems&Jewellery / July 2013 Gem-A News and Views Gem-A’s new London headquarters Gem-A’s new home is a beautiful eighteenth-century house in a gated private street in London — a building with a long and unique history. Jack Ogden looks at some of this history, from monks to medical education to music box repair, and discovers that it really isn’t part of London at all. Ely Place takes its name from the city of Ely number twenty-one, is now owned by The links with Cambridgeshire are still near Cambridge whose prominent history Gem-A. It is an historic place. Ely Palace, strong. Indeed, Ely Place is not officially began some 1,340 years ago when an abbey also known as Ely House, was the location part of London; technically it is part of was established there. A couple of centuries for Act 2, Scene 1, of Shakespeare’s Cambridgeshire. It has its own elected later, Ely Palace was established as the Richard II where a dying John of Gaunt made governing body — the Commissioners of Ely London residence for the Bishop of Ely and his famous ‘this scepter’d isle’ speech. Place. According to journalist Vitali Vitaliev thus it remained until the 1770s when the Elizabeth I ordered the Bishop of Ely to in an article in The Daily Telegraph in 2003, land was sold and the cul-de-sac Ely Place lease Ely Palace Garden to Sir Christopher there are now only four other such enclaves built on the site — a gated street bordered Hatton, henceforth known as Hatton surviving in Europe: the Campione d’Italia by 22 ‘genteel residences’ one of which, Garden — now London’s jewellery street. (an Italian town in Switzerland), Llivia Page 4 Gems&Jewellery / July 2013 Gem-A News and Views (a Catalan town in the French Pyrenees), Dr Ramage had an expertise in respiratory Interestingly, for a few years Gem-A Busingen (a German village in Switzerland) diseases in common with Sir James Walton, (along with the National Association of and Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog, (a Dutch/ surgeon and past president of Gem-A Goldsmiths) occupied Audrey House exactly Belgian municipality). One of the resulting after whom The James Walton library at opposite our new home in Ely Place. quirks is that, in theory anyway, Ely Place Gem-A is named. The front of our new home shows signs of cannot be entered by the Metropolitan In 1880 the freeholds of several repair to the World War II bomb damage Police unless they are invited in by the properties in Ely Place, including number that finally forced us out of Audrey House Commissioners. The gates across the 21, were placed on the market with vacant and into a temporary home. entrance of Ely Place are not simply to keep possession given on completion of sale due More recently the building has been police out — they served a practical purpose to ‘the ground leases being about to expire’. occupied by a varied range of professions, in the past to keep out ‘beggars, collectors This might indicate that the buildings originally from solicitors to finance. The latter include of old clothes, and other objectionable had 99-year leases. Since then occupants Tiuta PLC, whose mission to deliver ‘short- people’. According to one report they were have ranged through early hi-tech, games term finance to a broad range of clients closed ‘during the days of cattle markets and fine porcelain. Nicole Freres Ltd seeking rapid solutions to their financial in Smithfield [just down the road], and on ‘Internationally renowned as music box needs’ proved more short term than occasions of public executions at Newgate manufacturers, dealers and repairers’ were envisaged when it called in the administrators [four hundred metres away]’. based at 21 Ely Place in the early 1900s in September 2012. The resulting placing Number 21 Ely Place was already and were at the cutting edge of technology of 21 Ely Place on the market came at the more than a hundred years old when the back then. They sold ‘cylinder boxes’, perfect time for Gem-A. Our new home is last public execution was held at Newgate. ‘polyphons’, ‘zonophones’ and ‘disc records’ an ideal headquarters and campus, and a By then it had already seen a variety of and established a recording company, one good investment for the future. When the occupants including one involved, like of whose aims was to record Indian native freehold of 21 Ely Place was placed on the Gem-A, in education. In the 1820s music. At the beginning of the 1920s the market in 1880, the property was described Dr Francis Hopkins Ramadge, a Fellow building was occupied by Bliss Sports and as “exceptionally sound and lucrative for of the Royal College of Physicians and a Games Manufacturers Ltd who invented investment, especially for Trustees”. specialist in respiratory and other diseases, and patented such long-forgotten games as We can echo those words today. lived at number 21 and regularly gave ‘Flinks’ and ‘Ringflinks’ before going bankrupt ‘A Summer Course of Lectures and in 1922. The building then became the We will hold an opening party for our new Examinations on the Principles and Practice London showrooms for the Royal Crown building towards the end of the summer. of Physic, Materia Medica, and General Derby Porcelain Company Ltd until its Further details to be announced in the and Pharmaceutic Chemistry’ in the building.