A gemologist is not (necessarily) a stone/gem expert. A gemologist
is a stone TESTING expert by training. Supposedly a gemologist is
supposed to know how to tell synthetic from natural, ruby from
spinel, and all sorts of things like that. They don't necessarily
know what quality is about, or a good stone from a bad one,
John, I have to disagree with you here. Gemological training for a
gemologist or graduate gemologist diploma includes more than gem
testing. For one thing, you have to know the possible options for a
gems identity if you are going to be able to interpret test results,
so a good familiarity with all the types of gems is included and
important. And, the course sequences include courses specifically in
quality grading, both in diamonds and colored stones. So training in
determining good from bad quality gems is most certainly very much a
part of that training.
It’s pretty easy to understand what the training covers. If there is
an aspect to gems that is directly useful to someone buying or
selling or representing gems in the jewelry industry, either
wholesale or retail, but especially in retail stores, then it’s
likely a part of the gemological training programs. This means the
ability to understand and explain to customers or bosses, all the
various different gems, their properties, advantages, disadvantages,
varieties, etc, as well as relative values of each and why. You can’t
competently sell gems without some level of these understandings, so
it makes sense that the training covers these things as best it can.
You add the ability to recognize, test, determine, etc, the actual
identities in order to be sure you’re correctly representing stones
as what they really are, or correctly identifying stones belonging
to someone else in order to discuss them accurately.
For the most part, the training concerns dealing with cut gems.
There is, of course, some overlap into rough gems since the basic
understandings of the gem material that let you identify and quality
grade gems requires understandings that extend to rough stones too.
But the training does not delve any deeper into the mining or
mineralogy than is needed to let you discuss the gems with some depth
of knowlege, especially with the public. And although the training
teaches you to use and understand what aspects of gems are used to
grade quality, value, usability of gems, it is not the same as years
of experience with actual exposure to gems over time. This can be
learned only by that actual exposure to gems over time. The courses
show you as much as they can, including a wide variety of gems and a
whole lot of concentrated but there are still limits,
and a newly trained person in ANY field, from medicine to
engineering to gemology, will still get better and more knowlegeable
with experience and time.
Of course, the training in identification is an area the normal
trade, buying and selling, of gems, would not teach you, so it’s
especially useful as an addition to the conventional wisdom that
experience will give you. Quality grading, on the other hand, is the
reverse. Experienced gem dealers and lovers will be able, by eye or
with a loupe if they like, to come to exquisitly detailed opinions
of gem value and quality, just based on that experience. The training
on gem grading included in gemological training is both to give the
newcomer a head start on learning this stuff, so that they’ll reach
that level of experience and competence more quickly, that time will
already produce.
And importantly, it adds a method of consistent communication, so
that everyone is speaking the same language in describing gem
quality. This is NOT something the traditional non-gemological
approach gives. Nothing is perfect, of course, and the experienced
gem lovers will often find that standard nomenclature is not totally
adequate to distinguish fine levels of difference in quality, but
it’s a starting point that’s better than what we had before. And
training in this grading nomenclature and system is perhaps better
than learning it on your own, because some of the distinctions and
grades are very precisely defined. Many of use have had experience
with people claiming certain clarity or color or quality grades of
diamonds and gems, which end up being not quite so accurate. Often,
it’s because these are people who’ve NOT been accuratly trained in
these systems and their use, but who’ve picked it up on their own,
thinking they now understand it, but who don’t realize that they’re
not quite there. Examples are gem dealers who claim the GIA diamond
graders are too harsh, assigning too low a grade to a given stone.
This is a bit like a fisherman saying the ruler is wrong, that his
trout is actually a few inches longer than his ruler says. If GIA
defined the ruler and the grading terms, they’re best able to teach
people to use it accuratly. Other systems exist and are just as
valid, so long as they don’t claim to be the same grading system even
when different standards and definitions are used. This is one aspect
where non gemologists seem to make more errors than those with the
formal training.
But of course, you’re totally correct that anyone can learn any of
this without any formal training at all. It’s all
published, and not exceptionally complex as to require intense
teaching to comprehend, so someone who wants to learn it on their own
in the library and gem shops, etc, can certainly do it, and some
aspects of such education will exceed what any course can teach.
You’re certainly right that a love of gems doesn’t require a
refractometer, or even a loupe. But fully understanding what a
refractometer is measuring, and why, will give your experienced eye
an edge to understanding what you’re seeing, and why it’s worth
looking for or at. The instrument gives you absolute repeatable
numbers that have their own use. The eye doesn’t give you the
numbers, but it’s just as perceptive, and maybe more so, able to
integrate many aspects of a gems appearance and appeal into a sum
total opinion. But in a world where, for example, prices of diamonds
often depend on the stated grades, the gemologist who knows exactly
what a given grade is supposed to define, and can assign grades
accuratly in accordance with those definitions, will be at an
advantage over someone who’s trained themselves over the years, and
may think they know better.
Cheers
Peter Rowe
