Articles and News
INDUSTRY NEWS: NEW PRESTIGE PROMENADE PRESIDENT, GIA UPDATES TREATED RUBY WARNINGS, MORE February 08, 2012 (0 comments)
GIA: Beware Lead-Glass Filled Rubies! New Video, Verbiage Released
Carlsbad, CA—GIA (Gemological Institute of America) last week released new warnings about lead-glass filled rubies, and a video that explains the stones and the verbiage surrounding how it will describe them in gem reports. (The photo at left, by V. Pardieu for the GIA laboratory in Bangkok, Thailand, shows a collection of lead-glass filled star rubies.)
Key takeaway points from the new video are:
- Lead glass-filled rubies represent material that is heavily treated to improve transparency. The treatment is highly unstable, resulting in stones that can be easily damaged beyond repair.
- The material is relatively easy to identify using a gemological microscope or jeweler’s 10x loupe. Tell-tale signs include: a flash-effect, large gas bubbles in a stone’s cavities, or flattened bubbles confined to wide fractures filled with glass.
- Avoid any jewelry repair procedure and keep the material out of solvents, including basic household cleaning solutions.
- Sometimes called composite ruby, hybrid ruby, ruby with glass, or a host of other names, GIA considers some of this material so heavily treated that it does not warrant being called ruby at all, but rather a manufactured product.
Prestige Promenade Names Steven Mazza President, Doug Sills Steps Down
New York, NY--Jewelry trade organization Prestige Promenade has a new president. Douglas Sills of A. Link and Co., stepped down as of February 1 after 10 years in the role. Incoming is Steven Mazza, of The Mazza Co., who was elected to fill the role effective immediately. Sills continues to serve on the organization’s board of directors.
Mazza’s fifth-generation family business, The Mazza Co., has been a member of Prestige Promenade for seven years. He has served on the board for six years. Mazza also serves on the JANY board and previously held term at Luxury by JCK.
“I am honored to continue Doug Sills’ mission of making Prestige Promenade the premier destination during jewelry market week in Las Vegas. I’m looking forward to welcoming the retail community and sharing all we have to offer this June,” said Mazza.
Prestige Promenade is an organization that promotes its members through cooperative marketing and trade show exhibition efforts and is dedicated to enhancing opportunities with long-standing and new retailer partner relationships.
Webinar Tomorrow Addresses Luxury Trends for Q1 2012
Stevens, PA—Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing, will host a webinar featuring predictions about luxury consumption and spending for the first quarter of 2012. She will share results of Unity’s Luxury Consumption Index survey and what it suggests in terms of spending, as well as marketing strategies to successfully tap into consumer mindset, and what’s hot and what’s not in 22 different categories of luxury goods and services.
The webinar will be held Friday, February 10 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time. It will be recorded and stored for one month to review. Subscription fee to participate is $499, and includes unlimited attendees at each subscriber’s company. Subscribers will receive a copy of the slides used in the presentation, and fee is applicable toward the purchase of any Unity Marketing report.
CIBJO President Receives Award of Order of Carl Faberge
St. Petersburg, Russia—CIBJO president Gaetano Cavalieri has received the Award of the Order of Carl Faberge at a ceremony held last week during the opening of the International Jewellery Forum, JUNWEX Petersburg 2012.
The awards committee of the Carl Faberge Memorial Foundation said the honor was in recognition of Cavalieri’s contribution to the preservation and maintenance of the jewelry arts, as well as for the substantial part he has played in the development of the global industry.
The Order of Carl Faberge is an initiative of Tatyana Fedorovna Faberge, the great-granddaughter of the famous jeweler, and was envisioned by its founders to become a Russian equivalent of the Nobel Prize. The award was established to honor outstanding artists and entrepreneurs, and has been awarded to scholars, artists, politicians, and members of the business community. Cavalieri is the 38th person to be named an Order of Carl Faberge laureate since the award was established.
"It is a great honor to receive this award, which I accept also on behalf of CIBJO, which is dedicated to promoting the confidence of consumers in jewelry, as well to ensuring that the jewelry business makes a positive contribution to the economic and cultural life of the countries in which it is active," said Cavalieri. "It is a privilege to be included in the company of previous award laureates, and to be to the recipient of an award that carries the name of one the greatest and most influential jewelers ever to have lived."