Why Don’t All Gems Come in Any Cut?

I got the following question from two customers just this week: can I supply a matched pair of Merelani mint garnets, elongated pear shape.  The answer – and I don’t even have to look – is “no.”  (I actually did find one pair, so I was wrong, but you’ll see the astronomical price tag on my Etsy site!)

So why doesn’t any gem come in any cut?  The answer is really simple.  Gems are cut to maximize the rough.  Take, for instance, tourmaline rough, which is cylindrical and long.  That’s great for elongated pear shapes.  So is aqua and emerald sometimes (all three are beryl so the rough is very similar).  But most garnet rough is more roundish, pebble like.  That’s why it gets cut into ovals, some rounds, cushions, and anything else that accommodates that shape. 

Also, certain cuts bring out the beauty of the material, hence the famous “emerald” cut.  Emeralds are more sleepy than crisp, so an emerald cut, which has fewer facets, can bring out the color over the clarity.  Ceylon sapphires, by contrast, are usually cut into cushions and ovals, with step facets in the back.  Step cuts are bulkier but for Ceylon sapphires this is important because the color is sometimes just in the culet, and that cutting will create the illusion of an even tone when the gem is viewed from the front.  This explains the famous “zoning” that you can often see from the back (so it’s ok if you see it) but not the front (so it’s not ok if you see it).  Tourmalines that have watermelon coloring (pink inside, green at the rim) are often sliced or carved so that this effect is preserved.

Dravite Tourmaline Rough and Cut (Ovals are Best)

Diopside Rough

Some gems, i.e. amethyst, come in just about any shape.  That’s because amethyst is so cheap it can be bought by the kilo.  It then doesn’t matter how much you waste, most of the cost is in the cutting anyway.  The material is (nearly enough) free.  In other cases, i.e. tourmaline these days, the rough is very expensive.  And of course, when you buy and re-sell, your calculations are based on your cost.  If a customer wants you to do a special cut that wastes the material, your cost is still the same and so you will charge more for a smaller gem.

This also explains why despite what is commonly claimed, a retail customer does not necessarily lose out when she buys a stone that is cut to preserve weight.  Because if the seller marks up based on the cost of the rough, the buyer can get the most amount of weight – and hence value - out of her purchase.  Of course many sellers do not have a straightforward markup policy, they charge what the market will bear.   In that case the customer can lose out if she hasn’t looked at the prices of the gem she wants to buy (comparison shopping really pays in these cases).  That’s why it always pays for you as a customer to have some idea of the current market, of the most common cuts for gems, and for what is and isn’t possible based on the rough.  A few minutes of internet browsing of some of the common gem sites is usually enough to get a basic idea.

Burma Spinel Rough Crystal

Kyanite Rough, Just Shaved Around the Edges

Here are some of the most common cuts for popular gems:

Amethyst: cheap rough, any cut.
Alexandrite: elongated cushion, oval.  Round costs extra.
Aqua: any cut really, the rough is a nice size.
Citrine: cheap rough, any cut.
Emerald: Emerald cut and oval, some pears, rounds are at a premium.
Rhodolite garnet: any cut.
Ruby: Elongated cushions, ovals, then rounds (same as sapphire)
Sapphire: Elongated ushions, ovals, then rounds. Very few pears.  Step cuts for Ceylon.
Sphene: Ovals and Elongated cushions, then pears. Very few rounds.
Spinel: Cushion (square and elongated), oval, then round and pear.
Tanzanite: Lots of ovals and rounds, some cushions.  The rough is a bit bigger so more shapes are possible.
Tourmaline: Lots of longish cuts including emerald cut and pear shapes, not many rounds.
Tsavorite and Mint Garnet: Ovals, then all the other cuts.

A good rule of thumb is that oval is the cheapest and most common cut in most stones. Round is the most expensive.  

Watermelon Tourmaline Slices

My New Website

As many of you probably know, I will not be going back to Felician College in the fall.  It will be jewelry full time for me for now, or at least for the next year or two, as I build up the company.  (I’ll probably apply for another academic position at that point.  I do love academia but I love this too.)

I’ve had to think long and hard about the direction I want to go in, and I’ve decided it’s time to build my own website, which will run alongside with Etsy – I have no plans on forsaking Etsy anytime soon, I had a very productive meeting with part of their crew a couple of weeks ago and I’ll be visiting their offices in the next month. 

As I build my own site, however, I would love your feedback and ideas.  I have built my entire shop around my customers, their ideas, interests, and feedback.  I find this process very enriching and as I grow, I want to continue keeping you all involved! 

I am signing up with Squarespace to host my site, they have fully built e-commerce platforms where you can create multiple collections for sale, hook up your blog, do shipping, sales, credit card and PayPal processing, analytics, mailing lists and more.  It looks very exciting. 

I’m still in the very early stages of design, but of course these are the most crucial because that’s where you do the basic organization of the site.  Below are my main ideas.  If you have any thoughts, please convo me via Etsy, email me, or use the comment box below.  I will send out a questionnaire at some point but I’m not at that stage yet.

1. I’d like my site to concentrate on the high end items, so gold jewelry only, and nicer gems.  Why?  Because Etsy is better for the low end stuff so there’s no reason to duplicate.  The average Etsy customer doesn’t spend as much (my average sale used to be about $80, now it is $300, but I have many items that cost more and that don’t sell that well on Etsy).  I also want to do more high end custom work.  This will be a slow process because I’m not willing to take out a loan - rumor has it those have to be paid back!  So as the sales increase, I will start creating high end pieces one at a time.

2. Instead of using the standard Etsy categories (ring, pendant, necklace, earring…), I want to sort by collection.  But there will be a “search” button as well so people can search within the shop for just rings for instance.  I have to rename some of the collections, and I need ideas for those.  Right now the collections I have are Hexagon (this will include the kite settings), Gotham (already named), Petal (all the Victorian flower pieces), and Scroll (the earrings with the scroll design and the matching eternity band, plus simple pendants using the scroll settings).  I may start with the most complete collections (Hex and Petal).  Then later I will add the rest, and eventually another line or two.  There are some items that I don’t know where to put: the daisy ring, the pillow pendant.  And there are items that will not make it to the site and stay on Etsy only – the rest will be cross listed since I don’t have funds to make two of each.

3. Gems: after my initial jewelry lines are up, I will add a gem section for outright purchase or custom work.  For matched pairs, there will be options to purchase the setting from my scroll and hex lines, or others as relevant (i.e. I can add an option to make a dangly petal earring).  For single stones, I will also offer setting options as applicable.  And I will add some sort of custom form where people can make other requests for the stone they buy.  I will also offer the option to source a loose stone but I may need a minimum price point because finding a stone can take time.  Also, as custom work is extremely time consuming, I want to put more visual emphasis on using my existing designs.  That way they will be the first choice a customer makes, and a custom piece from scratch will be the second choice only.  Offering custom pricing using my existing settings will also allow a customer to calculate a combined design (i.e. adding a dangly or using a pendant for an earring).  Squarespace has a lot of listing variations, and this will come in handy.

4. For the pull down menus, right now this is what I have:

About:  Shop Mission, Shop Owner (members), Resources

Shop:  Pull down menu by collection

Blog:  links to my blog

Where to buy: My local shop, Etsy (and of course the website)

Custom: TBA

Gallery: Past orders and photos

This is what I have so far. I assume you won’t be seeing the site until late Summer, but I can use the blog to keep you updated, and to send you layout ideas (I’m hoping a friend of mine will help me with this but I’m not sure yet).  Right now I’m working on the back end part.  I don’t know diddly about building a website, so this is going to be interesting!

The Danburites of Morogoro

I love unusual gemstones, as you know, and if my gemstone dealer has anything of interest, no matter how tiny the production, he usually shows me first.  So you can imagine my surprise when he had me guess what the three teaspoons of clean yellow material were that he pulled out of a little plastic bag a couple of weeks ago.  I know Danburite to be clear or faint vanilla color but had never seen this type of color before.

Danburite was actually first discovered in the Danbury, CT, right here in the United States, in 1839.  It is also sometimes found in Mexico, Myanmar, and Madagascar, but production is very limited.  Danburite is a fairly hard crystal, about 7-7.5 on the Moh’s scale, and it does not require treatment.

Danburite from Morogoro

The strongly saturated yellow pieces that my gemstone dealer unearthed are from the Morogoro mines in Tanzania.  It was first found approximately 10 years ago, or maybe a little further back – the story gets murky at that point.  My geologist friend Jochen Hintze, who travels to Tanzania several times a year, first saw the crystals in 2004, when they were offered to him as yellow apatite.  The hardness of the stones revealed however that they weren’t apatite, so he set out to investigate.  It took Jochen 3 more years to determine the actual origin of the stones.  In 2007, when he was in his office in Aruja, Tanzania, waiting for brokers to arrive with new materials, someone offered him 50 kilos of the yellow crystal (most of which was not facet grade).  He was told the material came from Morogoro.

So Jochen set out to travel to Morogoro with the broker who had offered him the rough.  Most mining areas, naturally, are not located in the cities, but further out in the bush area, so any car will only go so far.  The last few miles of the trip, therefore, took them on a narrow foot path through the bush.  After some travel they arrived at a clearing the locals called “Munaraima” where about 15 men dug away at rocks with hammers and other basic equipment.  According to the miners, production was about 200-300 kg per month but the facet grade materials were rarely larger than what fits into the palm of the hand.  A few of the rocks also had a cat’s eye effect.  Jochen bought a fairly large piece but had to turn back quickly because at the time of his visit, the mine had not yet been reported to government officials in Tanzania.

Since then, the mine is in production only off and on, depending on availability of tools and dynamite.  It is not likely that the production will ever be large, and due to political unrest and disagreements among locals, it is often the case that a mine simply ceases operation even if material is still available, only to start up again a few years down the road.

Danburite Mine - Courtesy Jochen Hintze

Hand Engraving

Engraving can add a nice personal touch to a piece of jewelry that is special to you. I recently sold an unheated Burma sapphire to Jeannie, who had been looking for one for years. But that kind of expenditure doesn't always leave financial room for a custom design from scratch. So we had to improvise.  Jeannie wanted something antique looking but without an astronomical price tag (which is rather understandable!).

Since her gem was a 5.9 mm round there was a good chance it would fit my 6 mm bezel ring. The ring was a tad large but I improvised and had a rubber mold from a casting and the ring recast, which shrank it by about 10%.  The idea was then to place diamonds both on the halo and on the shank, together with a double row of millgrain around the inner rim of the bezel. I had to check with the setter to make sure there was room for two rows of millgrain.  He also had to tell me what diamond size he needed.

Jeannie's Ring Side View

Jeannie's Ring from the Front

The ring came out beautifully as you can see from the photos, but it was a bit empty looking from the side.  And while the millgrain lent it a very nice antique look, it needed something more.  This is where Alex Pugachevskiy came in.  Alex learned hand engraving when he was 14, and has done it pretty much full time ever since.  He opened his shop in NY in 1991.  All engraving is done by hand, with teensy tools and a big microscope.  One has to have a very steady hand for this kind of work, and it helps to have seen a lot old jewelry to get a feel for the kinds of curves and swirls look best.  Alex has engraved rings, bracelets, cuff links, watches, and even put family crests on gold buttons.  I want to have him engrave a pendant for me that I will then recast (for casting, the engraving has to be made deeper).  But I have to save first!

Let’s have a look at exactly how Alex proceeded with Jeannie’s ring: Note first that he added some swirls to the shank, going past the diamonds, finishing with a sort of V.  That makes it look almost like there are more diamonds on the shank. Alex also lengthened the millgrain, and you cannot tell where the setter’s millgrain ends and his begins.

Jeannie's Ring After Engraving

Then, Alex engraved the sides of the shank with a similar pattern, going as far down as room allows (in the back, the shank is a bit thin for much engraving).  The diagonal line at the end suggests more engraving than there is. 

Alex also engraved the entire gallery including the basket, where some people place diamonds.   To top it all off, he engraved the outer part of the bezel.  I remarked on this when I picked it up and he just said, “well, it looked empty.”

Close Up of Gallery and Bezel

I had actually given Alex total artistic license with this ring.  I set a rough budget ($350), knowing from previous experience what that might buy, and said “make it look antique.”  Alex obviously knows much more about works and how it looks than I do, so why not let the expert take over at that point?  If you go to Alex’s website (alexhandengraving.com) and check out his work, you’ll see why I didn’t think I needed to provide any further direction. 

The result is a teensy work of art, one that Jeannie will get to treasure for a lifetime.  And I'm jaleous, lol.  

Custom Orders Revisited

Last year my gemstone category outsold every other category I have on Etsy. So I have upped my gem offerings, as you no doubt have noticed. As a result, I have gotten a lot more custom order requests. This is loads of fun, but way more time consuming - plus many quotes don't go anywhere. This is because on the customer's part, there is the experience of sticker shock. What makes custom work so ridiculously expensive?  

 Well, the average labor cost for jewelry work in my area is about $50 per hour. And if i don't do the work myself - I often don't because I don't have the time or the expertise - then that's not money I make. My earnings are Incorporated into my markup formula. That's why so many jewelers manufacture overseas. But I like supporting local artisanship and I don't like not having any control over what happens with my designs and my gems. Nor would my customers like it.

Some pieces I make take perhaps an hour. Soldering just a bail is only a few minutes. But there are labor minimums. Which can be reflected in a per piece price. Making a five stone ring can take 3 hours if done from scratch. The channel wire pieces that are so popular in my shop take about an hour. 

Made For Tracy: Three Hex Bezels Soldered Together Plus Bail

This is why, whenever possible, I use stock settings that I have developed, and occasionally I buy supply parts like pre-finished settings or shanks. Stud earrings for instance come ready made as most etsy sellers that carry studs will tell you.

Another expensive item can be CAD -computer aided design work. This is also billed at $50 per hour. Now, when I commission CAD work, my goal is to cast several pieces and sell all of them. That distributes the cost. But when I make a custom design for one person, the customer has to pay it all. Plus 3-d printing and mold and casting labor.

Made For Julie, Using Channel Wire and Petal Settings

Adding all that up, a custom design might cost a few hundred dollars before any materials and before markup. 

So let's discuss markup. What is that for, and why is it 2-2.5 x cost for wholesale and double that for retail?

Take my case. I do Etsy 30 hrs a week minimum and that's not making any jewelry. 

I also pay my assistant for 1-2 full days. Not making jewelry. What do we do? Photos, listings, convos (oodles and oodles of convos), quotes, bookkeeping, shipping. That's the work at home, 20 hrs minimum.

Then we buy supplies, pick up castings, place orders, wait for pre polish, take the pieces home, inspect, fit the gems, pack each order for setting, go to the jeweler that helps me (or the engraver, or the wax carver), pick up and drop off from setting, inspect again, drop off for electro plating, or final polish, or get rhodium done. Inspect again. That's 2 full days each week with lots of waiting at suppliers when it's busy, or waiting to have a bill done, go over each item. I work on 20-30 items each week. So it's a ton of running around, the convo system always going off in my iPhone. 

Made for Lynne, Channel Wire and Hex Bezel

Let me throw in one more piece of the puzzle: pieces that don't sell and new items you want to produce. That costs money. Production and development that's called. It's so you can grow. But you can't grow unless you have extra profit worked into your formula. 

Long story short, if something you want done costs $20 in materials and $50 in labor, then you might pay $150 at my shop and $300 in the store if its made here. And if I don't charge that, I fold. It's that simple. And that expensive. 

Made for Julia, Hex Bezels and Rose Gold Chain

RISK! How to Deal in High End Gems and Not Lose Your Shirt – or the Gem

Last November, I was approached by an Australian customer to source an engagement stone for her.  She wanted a Ceylon sapphire, 4 carats, emerald cut, no heat, with cert.  The budget: $15,000.  Needless to say I don’t have those kinds of stones lying around.  Not in that price range for sure, but I also don’t have the kind of inventory in larger sizes that allows for such specifics.  Nonetheless I was intrigued to see if I could make this happen.  But where would I get the stone, how would I ship it, and what if the customer didn’t like what I picked?  Would I be saddled with an expensive gem that I couldn’t use, and a huge tab?

This little anecdote illustrates how much risk is involved in buying and selling gems.  There are risks concerning storage, transport, theft and last but not least, enormous risks of financial loss.  How is this risk managed?  Part of the answer is easy: you can get insurance, you can have a safe, and you can get an alarm system.  But that’s not the whole story.  Most insurance companies have a high deductible and demand high premiums, so it only pays to have it when you carry high end inventory.  When I looked for insurance for my jewelry business, I was offered a deductible of $5,000 at a premium of $5000 per year and a $50,000 insurance max.  This basically made no sense for me.  I don’t own anything that’s $5000.

4 Carat Sapphire, Ceylon, No Heat

The most interesting risk calculation, however, involves risk of return.  What if the customer isn’t happy with her purchase?  Who pays?  In cases like this, the safe spot is that of middle man.  You memo out a gem the customer might be interested in, and you work out the terms of the memo.  Most memo agreements are only 1-2 weeks, longer terms involve either strong relationships or good references.  A purchase, in the gem trade, cannot be refunded.  I think the reason is simply that even a gem trader may not own all of his inventory (yet).  Or more precisely, he may not have it paid off.  So as he makes sales, he pays his bills, and his own supplier is waiting for that to happen, because that supplier may be in Sri Lanka or India or Africa without access to a wealthy market.  So, until the gem is with its final owner without return, everyone may have to wait.  The risk of loss or breakage, meanwhile, remains with the person who has the stone in their possession. 

Let’s now return to my Aussie customer.  We proceeded with great caution in conducting the sale.  I first investigated possible gem candidates.  I put word out and my search led to an Indian gem dealer who requested some reference before dealing with me.  After passing that test, and having a nice chat in his office during which he evaluated my gem expertise, I looked at the stones, snapped some pix, and forwarded specs, prices, and certs to my prospective buyer.  She preliminarily chose one stone and I went back for more pix.  After more back and forth on Etsy, her asking certain questions about the stone, my trying to answer them, she decided to purchase.  I memo’d the stone, which I ran by my own lab for a quick second look (because I, too, needed to be sure about the seller). 

Hand Shot of the Sapphire

I collected the money via PayPal, then shipped FedEx but through a private insurer. This cost $100 with a $10,000 insurance policy, and my customer had to pay hefty custom’s fees.  (But these were all things we sorted out before I even memo’d the stone.)  I got 1 month memo terms and promised to stay in constant touch with seller and buyer.  As soon as my customer had the stone in her hands, I let my seller know.  Before purchase, my buyer and I had negotiated a 2 week inspection and return period, which my seller had agreed to wait out.  The buyer loved her stone and all was good, no return necessary.  At that point I paid out the seller.  Longer returns are not feasible given the great complexity of these transactions.  These aren’t shirts from Macy’s.  They’re more like real estate transactions – as much as possible, the checking is done beforehand to minimize trouble.  By the time you sign the dotted line, you have 3 days to withdraw, and that’s it.

At no point during this complicated transaction was this gem at my house!  At no point was it in the subway.  I shipped it on the day I memo’d it and I had a friend with me to walk me over to the lab and to my gem dealer friends who shipped it.  They kept it in their safe, in a very secure building, until FedEx picked up.  To this end, some NY gem dealers actually have a lock box at one of the many banks that surround 47^th Street.  That way nothing leaves the area, which is generally very safe (practically every other person on the street is a security guard).  That way they can keep what they memo’d right in the bank in their secure lockup.

Almost every week people ask me if I can get them a “this” or a “that” to look at.  This I am happy to do but when the “this” goes much above $1000, it turns into a complicated matter.  Perhaps this blog entry helps explain why.

The Spinel Craze

As you have probably noticed, I put nearly a half a dozen Mahenge spinels on my site in the last 2-3 weeks, and almost all of them sold.  What is going on? 

Apparently the market on spinels is extremely tight right now.  While there is almost no interest in the Ceylon variety – mostly because they have grey mask, Mahenges but also Burmese reds are flying out the door.  The famous neon spinels are produced only in one location around the world (Mahenge, Tanzania), and Burmese reds, especially the slightly larger ones with open color, are also hard to find.  In general, gemstones that have pure and bright colors are more popular.  They simply catch all the attention, even in the smaller size.  I have earrings that use 3.5mm spinels as a connector gem, with chrysoberyls on the bottom.  Still, everyone asks about the little pink stones.  This would never happen if the gems were garnets.  So the market gets tight when supply and demand are no longer in sync.  Prices jump up, and right now they are jumping on a faster than quarterly basis.  Production of Mahenges is steady but not huge, and demand keeps outpacing supply.

So what makes a top quality Mahenge or Burmese spinel?  Both are judged primarily by intensity in color.  Burmese spinels should be bright, stop sign or fire engine red.  Many Burmese gems have an orange modifier but that is much less desirable.  Definitely they should not look like garnet.  They should be more pink than pyrope garnet but less purple than rhodolite.  The red of a top quality Burmese spinel is extremely pure, and it radiates out.

Burmese Spinels, Top Color

Mahenge spinels, the top color anyway, are neon pink.  Not baby pink, not orangy or rosy pink.  But straight bubblegum super strongly saturated neon.  The ones with the orange modifier are next, they can look peachy, almost like an intense padparadscha sapphire.  They would definitely rank above orangy looking Burmese stones, which end up looking less peach but more orange.  Washed out Mahenges are still expensive, but not generally of collector’s interest.

Mahenge Spinel with A Tad of Peach

Cutting for Mahenges should be top of the line, because that’s what most stones entering the U.S. are like.  For Burmese material, you will sometimes have to resort to native cuts, or older cuts.  Many are step cut, not brilliant or Portuguese.

Mahenge Spinel, Portuguese Cut, Top Color

Clarity should be judged the same.  A spinel should be clean or have only extremely minor imperfections. If it isn’t, it’s better to buy a cabochon.

In terms of price, both Mahenges and Burmese spinels are about equal.  Price jumps are every half carat, not every carat.  Retail (gem dealer retail, not store retail) for a .5-.99 ct stone is about $500/ct, for a stone that’s 1-1.5 ct it’s $1000.  Then $1500, and $2000 respectively.  Or more.  After that, astronomical.  Fuhgettaboutit, as they say in Brooklyn.