A gem dealer's journal — gemological laboratory

Hey Loungers,    Today we have the pleasure to interview a new acquaintance of ours: Jeremy Dunn. He is a talented Seattle based jeweller who has won 3rd place in the 2020 AGTA Spectrum awards.    Jeremy, whom we discovered during the very same Tucson show, follows a path that is not unlike that of our pal Jason Marchiafava in that he hand makes his jewellery instead of using the more modern CAD systems to develop his models.     Let us see in this interview how he came to be the artist he is today and what drove him to take the traditional approach rather than the modern one.   ...

Hey Loungers, This week we welcome as our guest Ms. Victoria Raynaud, the young French gemologist who has quite the track record albeit her age and is one of the last people to have learned the traditional Swiss cutting technique! She has worked diligently under our pal Vincent Pardieu both at GIA Bangkok and at DANAT Bahrain and is now setting her own activity as a gem cutting expert in Bangkok, Thailand! But whom better than herself could tell us more about herself? Victoria the floor is yours!     Victoria learning to cut on a traditional Burmese faceting handpiece during...

Hey Loungers,

Those of you that have been following us since the start have surely heard of Jeffery “Master” Bergman, if only for his column in our pages: Introduction to Gemology.

Jeff, besides having been a kind and caring master in the trade to our teams, has a solid 40 plus year experience in the trade under his belt and is likely to be one of the most prominent, and vocal members of our merry industry.

Jeff has been lecturing countless times for the prestigious GIA Gathering in Bangkok on a variety of topics ranging from rubies and sapphire to emeralds without ever forgetting the memorable Opal talk about two three years ago which forced titans of the opal trade to bow down and publicly acknowledge their mistakes.

All in all, Jeff does no longer need introduction yet here we are, welcoming him for a long overdue interview for a Gem Dealer’s Journal.

Jeff, the floor is yours,

Hey Loungers, Here comes the second part of our interview with Stewart Young. After exploring the world of auction houses with him in the first part of this interview we are discussing today the rise of his brand. How is a jewellery brand created, what makes its DNA attractive to customers and what makes for a successful business in our trade. Without any further delay I give you today’s guest: Mr. Stewart Young!   Here is Stewart Young featuring a lovely Fairy Brooch - Photo Credit: Tiancheng International   AsiaLounges: Hi Stewart and thank you for being with us again today....

Hey Loungers,

As you may have noticed in our recent interviews, the question of ethics and transparency in the gem trade is a bit of a recurring issue of late.

Today, we are lucky enough to have with us Hayley Henning from the Greenland Ruby A/S and we will be discussing just this: Ethics in the gem mining industry.

Greenland Ruby A/S is the only large scale gem mining company to operate under the European Union laws to my knowledge and perhaps the only ruby mine in the world that can claim to stand on ethical grounds.

Back to Hayley though, she has been working for various of the most iconic mining operations in the last twenty years among which the now known as Tanza One that she helmed for little under a decade!

Without any further delays we give you, Hayley Henning!