France, Germany (Wiirtemburg), and Spain have deposits of jet, and it is worked and sold in these countries. Good imitations of the real diamond wedding rings have been used; those in glass are harder, heavier, and colder to the touch, as are also all the black stones, such as onyx, obsidian, and black tourmaline, but [...]
For jewelry purposes, jet should be opaque, pure black in color, faultless, and homogeneous throughout. The good surface polish which it takes is soon scratched in wear, and the material is easily cracked, chipped, or broken. Yet good examples of old jet jewelry,; some of which is carved, still exist, but its sale is very [...]
Jet is* really a kind of fossilized coal, or a brown lignite, which has formed over a period of many thousands of years. It is not as hard as diamond so it can’t be used for diamond wedding bands. It is therefore essentially a combination of hydrogen and carbon. It usually occurs in alum shales, [...]
This material was worked into articles of personal adornment as long ago as the Bronze Age, but although its use is of such antiquity, its popularity has gradually declined. A wave of fashion about the year 1870 revived the demand for jet, but for many years now it has been seldom worn or used. As [...]
The true origin of coral was a source of speculation for many centuries. Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny all considered that it was a plant, and it was not until the Eighteenth Century that Reaumur and Peyssoull proved that coral was nothing mote than an aggregation of animal matter and the calcareous, skeleton like deposit of [...]
A variety of expensive jewelry is made up, necklaces, rings, brooches, plaques, earrings, and some selected pieces are carved. The pale pink color, if uniform, is the most expensive, ox-blood reds following in popular demand, outside Italy. In that country, coral is always wdm and it is never out of fashion. Finely carved pieces are [...]
This Japanese coral is mostly of an ox-blood color, and it is sometimes called moro coral. But the same color is found in the Mediterranean, although in smaller masses, and the Italians work this in the same way as the other colors of coral. The finished article marketed in most countries comes almost exclusively from [...]
The variety of coral used in jewelry is known as corallium rubrum, or corallium nobile. The masses grow in much the same shape as a shrub but smaller, the trunk never over 2 inches across. They grow in indefinite directions, and taper towards a slightly rounded end.
Opaque and fairly soft (the hardness is only about [...]
Our earliest ancestors who lived by the sea and fished for their food must have found pieces of coral in their nets. Its attractive color and the ease with which the material could be shaped made it natural for it to be used in personal ornament, and history shows us that it has been regarded [...]
Ambergris is not connected with true amber in any way. It is a morbid secretion from the intestines of the spermaceti whale, and it is generally found in the sea since it is one product of ;i certain illness which afflicts this type of whale. The materia! rapidly hardens on exposure to air and it [...]