THE DIFFICULTY OF MATCHING

The rubies arranged below the photograph to the right are various qualities that are organized by tone from 7 to 3, and in order of beauty as S, A, B, C, and D. These photographs make it easy to understand how challenging it is to match gemstones without defects, not only by their beauty and tone, but also by their size and overall appearance. Because gemstones are products of nature, each has a different color and characteristics, and gathering stones that have the same overall appearance is difficult. As mentioned before, matching eleven Mogok rubies of three-carat size like those shown on the previous pages is an especially rare thing. There are look-alikes when it comes to people, too, but trying to gather together eleven look-alikes would result in quite a bit of variation.

In a chemical factory outfitted with the proper equipment and the necessary raw materials, it is possible to produce a thousand or ten-thousand synthetic stones of 5-S quality, or even virtually unlimited quantities of three-carat-size stones. Over one hundred years ago, the French chemist Verneuil succeeded in producing synthetic ruby by melting powered chemical compounds under high temperatures. Because their authenticity was not possible to verify at the time, these stones were sold as genuine. Even to this day, there are people who still own these pieces, convinced that they are natural. When they learn of the stone’s synthetic nature they are greatly disappointed, which is damaging to consumer confidence in gemstones. In spite of this, modern producers of synthetic gemstones continue to sell their product using language which suggests that synthetic stones are gemstones. We do not want to still be doing this kind of thing in the year 2100. There is nothing wrong with enjoying synthetic stones as accessories, but the producers should conduct business in a more conscientious manner by making synthetic stones that can easily be identified as such, and by accurately referring to their product as “synthetic” or “man-made” instead of calling them “gemstones.”