The Secrets of Jewelry
This book is about how the jewelry business is organized and conducted. The author has been in the precious stones trade for 20 years, though his background is in science. Thus, his desire to be honest and objective in conveying knowledge about the jewelry industry to the reader falls within both tradition and professional ethics. This book is meant for those who are interested in how jewelry is crafted, how much things cost in the jewelry world, and how exactly this world is organized. There is hope that all who are enamored in the precious beauty that is jewelry will, after reading this book, make fewer mistakes when choosing to enter the jewelry business.
Here, you will not find either any advertisement or manipulations on behalf of the any particular jewelry firm or any pseudo-scientific chemical analysis or lengthy discussions over the minerals’ origins. Instead, this book is an outward glance of a professional gemologist at the subject which many people would like to understand even a little bit.
I’ve known Nikolay for a long time, ever since we were first introduced by Kenneth Sew, a well-known gemologist from Hong Kong. People enter this profession from all walks of life and once they experience its delights, they never want to leave. Gemology exerts a powerful attraction; the fascination of gems never loses its spell. Nikolay came to this business as an expert in jade – he was engaged in extraction and buying up this mineral in the territory of the former USSR. The paths of stone dealers are always crossing and our intersections became more and more frequent. I was always interested to hear Nikolay’s stories about jade, its history, geology and extraction. In turn, I shared my knowledge of rubies, sapphires, emeralds and padparadscha with him.
We became friends and started to visit exhibitions in Tucson, Zurich, Denver and Hong Kong together. I’ve visited his mineral deposit in Kazakhstan and stayed for a while in Moscow. He often visits me in Bangkok and Geneva. Our work involves a lot of travelling, so we often visit deposits together. During the last few years we have accompanied each other to Madagascar and Kenya, Columbia and Brazil, the Central African Republic and Tanzania. In addition, every year we make several trips to Burma and Sri Lanka.
When my business partner finally showed me the book on which he had been working for the last five years, I felt greatly honoured. We all know that there have been a great many volumes written about jewels, but the main difference between Nikolay’s book and all the others is that its writer is a top expert, who is personally familiar with every single one of the precious stones he has written about in his extraordinarily interesting book. In fascinating detail, he describes not only diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds, but also such splendid gems as spinel, demontoid, tsavorite, jade, tanzanite and tourmaline, which are widely used in the jewellery business all around the world.
He positively dispels any ignorant ideas about jewellery. Let me explain what I mean. Most people’s knowledge of jewels and jewellery products, their quality and cost, isn’t simply minimal but is also overloaded with an enormous number of myths and delusions. What Nikolay does is to open up jewellery’s most intimate secrets to each and every reader, using simple language and terminology that the layman can easily understand.
The book supplies detailed and correct instructions on how to choose and acquire a jewel of the highest quality for a reasonable price. The advice the author gives is true and honest and will help you to become the owner of gems or jewellery pieces that will not only give you endless pleasure, but will keep and even increase their value in the years to come.
Allen Lewis
