This content was first published on IGR – Italian Gemological Review no. 4 in 2018. The information provided here is therefore current as of the original publication date.
A gemmologically Manichean vision exiled synthetic stones in an isolation ward attended only by cautious and solicitous doctors, as if the market had to be protected by a dangerous infection. In other cases, instead, the sciences of the materials created in a laboratory have been encouraged to imitate the natural products, obtaining functional, convenient and, why not, beautiful results.
Elsewhere they often praise new discoveries, for example those concerning fabrics replacing furs: they are equally comfortable and do not imply the death of living beings. We should be glad to reduce the pressures on environment by avoiding intensive uses of resources. Building in a laboratory crystals which are similar to the natural ones is instead considered a more suspect rather than an intriguing operation, a sort of evil needed to favour the free will of virtuous distinction: on the one hand, sacred, authentic and untouched gems, on the other those manipulated or lab grown.
The engaging trips of such a great expert as Alberto Malossi around the Athens of Douros brothers or the California of the Chatham family give us back a narration and amusement register that was lacking in synthetic stones, along with those pictures whose beauty surprises and professionally warns us.
Beside Alberto Malossi, the contents of this issue benefitted from the collaboration of Dick and Billie Hughes. Unfortunately, the title of their article can not be translated. Crystal Blue Persuasion is, among other things, a song of the soundtrack of Breaking Bad, the successful TV series where blue methamphetamine is a true protagonist. Well, sapphires from Madagascar are a buzz. The message arrived thanks to Dick who is the most important researchers in the world on the subject and Billie who gives us the superb cover and neat shots able to summarise rivers of words with shining immediacy, Thanks.
Thanks also to Vincent Pardieu. Without his documents and the wide range of his direct testimony we wouldn’t have been able to recreate in the most balanced way that event connected to the tensions and the alleged abuses on miners around the concessions of rubies in Montepuez in Mozambique. The fate of precious resources in countries that are still weak and disadvantaged can tell, against the light, the story of the frailty of African countries coping with modernity and globalisation. Should governments follow autonomous mining policies and accept a precarious and inadequate exploitation or should they ally to big and expert multinational corporations quoted on the Stock Exchange? And can these latter maintain an ethical virginity before the land disruptions following their settlement? Tanzania is trying a third way and we give an account on the wall built to protect the Tanzanite productive belt.
The report of Italian minerals continues with a guide that we hope will prove useful to enthusiasts and collectors alike, while the lessons meant to help people approach the world of inclusions held by Luigi Costantini, the guru of didactics for us Italians continue. Have a nice reading!
By Paolo Minieri, published on IGR – Italian Gemological Review #4, Summer 2018.
