Media Reviews: Gems, A Lively Guide for the Casual Collector

Gems, A Lively Guide for the Casual Collector
by Daniel J. Dennis Jr.
published by Abrams, New York, NY. 1999.
Hardcover, color, 8" x 10", 192 pages, $29.95.

Reviewed by June Culp Zeitner.

This book, a beginner’s guide to buying gems and jewelry, is written by the senior gem show host for the Home Shopping Network on television. The book is intended to help hesitant people acquire fine jewelry, appreciate the gems and jewels of their friends and those in museum collections, and also treasure their own gem heirlooms. It is about buying jewelry, but, it concentrates mainly on gems.

In the opening chapter, the author dismisses the ancient classification of only four gems being deemed “precious.” He shows a practical and timely way of pricing stones. For example, he points out that an exceptionally beautiful, rare, and well-cut garnet is worth more than a heavily included, lifeless emerald. He classifies blue topaz, coral, amethyst, and turquoise with the inexpensive stones, but cautions that the price groupings should not be taken as written in stone.

Asterism, adularescence, aventurescence, and other phenomena are well defined also. The author discusses the sources of the gems, the types of deposits, and the mining methods. However, it is apparent that he is not a field collector himself.

A chapter covering gem enhancement is up-to-date and includes the crucial issues of disclosure. Although the Federal Trade Commission ruled that any treatment requiring special care must be disclosed, it also ruled that treatments like irradiating and oiling need not be disclosed. The author credits home shopping channels with educating the public on gems. However, false information is given, too.

Since the author knows his audience well, people with genuine interest who are lacking knowledge, he writes in a very informal, almost folksy way. He does, however, stick to the formal term “en cabochon.”

The largest part of the book is dedicated to information regarding specific gems. These are presented in an alphabetic manner. The facts were most likely chosen according to importance to the consumer. The “Most Popular Gemstones” chapter is followed by “Other Gems and Minerals.” Here it is hard to determine why some were included while other, better choices were omitted. For example, milarite is not nearly as well known by those interested in gems and lapidary as amazonite, gem chrysocolla, epidote, and variscite. Are things over simplified for the television consumer? Oregon opal is not usually faceted, as the book says it is, it does not look anything like white quartz, and it occurs in thundereggs, not geodes.

The list of “Weird Stones” at the end of the “Other Gems and Minerals” is weird itself. The author seems to have confused the drab, uncuttable fossil ammonites from Morocco with the lovely, iridescent gem material from Canada (ammolite). He also thinks that there is something weird about the wonderful charoite from Russia, and that septarians are an unsightly mass of yellow calcite and other materials. He says that Picasso marble is named after someone in Utah.

The photos of the elegant, faceted gems on the frontispiece are sparkling and vivid. Unfortunately, the rest of the pictures are not . . . consider black agate!

Nevertheless, the book does do what it was intended to do. It gives people help about choosing stones, buying jewelry, and caring for it. It answers the questions of some of the beginning buyers, and hopefully inspires them to read more books about the field. Bookstores, libraries, and the Internet list many books on gems, jewelry, beads, and lapidary arts. Many of the top ones have been published by Abrams.

June Culp Zeitner, who has been writing for the Lapidary Journal since 1956 and joined the editorial staff in 1967, is the author of nine gem and mineral books, and has helped to start the National Rockhound and Lapidary Hall of Fame.