Smithsonian Collection
Some of the world’s most spectacular diamonds and other gems are located in the National Gem Collection in the Museum of Natural History in Smithsonian Collection in Washington, D.C. In the collection are diamonds known to almost everyone, such as the Hope Diamond, as well as other large diamonds and other precious gems and jewelry.
In the National Gem Collection are examples of spectacular minerals and crystals, as well gemstones and jewelry. You can see a...
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Selecting Diamonds
Diamonds are graded for certification by
laboratories using grading criteria. Four of
these criteria are critical to understand when
making a diamond purchase or investment.
Known as the Four Cs these criteria are:
color, cut, clarity and carat.
Color is the result of the composition of a
diamond and it does not change. When a
jeweler is describing the color of a diamond
they are referring to the presence or absence
of color in white diamonds. Because a
diamond with no...
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Ruby and Sapphire
It’s hard to imagine that a mineral with a name as mundane as corundum yields gems as exquisite as the ruby and sapphire, or even that these two stones, so different in color and mystique, are actually the same mineral family.
Lucky you if your birthstone is sapphire (September) or ruby (July). These are among the richest-colored of all gemstones with a romance and history as colorful as they are. Rubies are actually rarer than sapphires, and only red corundums are...
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Royalty diamonds
When did diamonds first become recognized as precious stones and used for jewelry? The earliest reference to them has been found in a Sanskrit document dated around 300 BCE. They were associated with the gods and were used to decorate religious icons and statues. In India, only kings, the highest caste, were allowed to own them.
Although diamonds were traded east and west of India, they were still prized in their natural crystal state, or polished to increase the shine and...
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Rose Quartz
Who doesn’t love rose quartz in all its varying hues of pink? Rose quartz takes its name from the flower because of its translucent and delicate pink color caused by traces of iron, manganese or titanium. Rose quartz is usually very large – meaning that it doesn’t form crystals. Rose quartz is found in Madagascar, India, Germany and several areas in the USA. Much rose quartz was extracted from a famous site near Custer, South Dakota, but now, most of the...
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Quartz 2
In ancient Egypt, glazed quartz served as a substitute when no high quality examples of Turquoise could be found. The Greeks had originally named quartz, krystallos, the word for ice, but this soon came to mean any crystal. In China’s Ming Dynasty, quartz often showed up as stone in jewelry work. In Pre-Columbian America, explorations of Mixtec graves have uncovered quartz use for ear jewelry. In European history, Queen Elizabeth I’s court spiritualist’s crystal ball...
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