IGR – Italian Gemological Review #18 – Spring 2024 – International Edition

Description

IN THIS ISSUE:

• Editorial – Sitting with a lovely cup of coffee, I flick through the kaleidoscopic universe of IGR issue #18 (Michele Macrì)

• The Diamond View – Navigating the transition: Insights into the Global Diamond Market in 2024 (Sergio Sorrentino)

• 10X – Our Friends the Inclusions. The Detective at the Party of Inclusions. Sixteenth Episode (Luigi Costantini and Claudio Russo)

• GEM NEWS – Will the recently inaugurated Surat Diamond Exchange cooperate or overlap with its Mumbai counterpart?
• GEM NEWS – Will De Beers/Botswana agreement on diamond shares pave the way for social equality?
• GEM NEWS – The first synthesis of lapis lazuli was made by Raimondo di Sangro in 18th-century Naples: the research by the University of Bari
• GEM NEWS – One of the rarest meteorites has fallen in Italy and opens up new horizons
• GEM NEWS – In France synthetic diamonds cannot be described as “cultivated” or “created in a laboratory”
• GEM NEWS – Whatever it works. GIA adopts the term “Hanadama” for Akoya pearl evaluation

• ETHICAL STONES – Diamonds for a better future. Sierra Leone’s Diamond Industry and Martin Rapaport’s missions (Paolo Minieri and Sergio Sorrentino)

• 3D Elastometric Tactile Sensors applied to Glyptics, from Observation to the Measurement of Engravings (Flavio Butini and Rose Marie Scappin)

• What is X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) (Peters Brangulis)

• Mineralogical Characterization of Natural or Treated Ethiopian Opals: Water Immersion Tests, Transformation, and Reversibility (Ada Antonella Rasulo, Manuela Rossi, Rosanna Rizzi and Miriam Alberico)

• The Ophir Collection: $60 Million dollar Bargain, or $3.2 Billion Dollar Scam? (Jeffery Bergman)

• Gemologists, Entrepreneurs and Associations discuss at La Sapienza in Rome the application of Guidelines for the transparent sale of gemstones (Michele Macrì)

• LETTERS TO IGR – Lorenzo, a 10-year-old boy, stumbles across a sample of jadeite in Piedmont. Gübelin’s test confirms the nature of the material (Isabella Romeo)
• LETTERS TO IGR – The IGR Editorial team received the testimony of Chiara Teodori, a GIA gemologist who was the primary analyst of the sample (Chiara Teodori)

• COUNTER-GEMOLOGY – Ethics mocked or ethical mockery? (The “Bad-Mouthed Jiminy Cricket”: Luigi Costantini)

ON THE COVER:

Collecting alluvial diamonds in Sierra Leone. (Photo: Davide Sorrentino, IGR)