hello everyone! I just started school for jewelery design and I want to be ahead of the curve. One of our subjects is gemology and its quite overwhelming but super fascinating. Im struggling to find the best way to learn about it all.
how do you recommend starting out?
i would love to hear your thoughts and thanks a bunch for your time
It would depend on what you need to know about gemmology I suppose.
For me I ended up just rushing head first into everything and took a registered program in gemmology. I am almost finished it now but the program I took started out with basics including the gem and crystal structures (cubic, hexagonal, trigonal, orthorhombic, monoclinic, etc.) and what their general properties were (cubic are isotropic, the -als are uniaxial and the -ics are biaxial). It helps understand certain gems better and it allows you to remember things about them better as well. That's more of the gemmology side though, if you're just needing to know what stones can take heat or are brittle and the like for jewellery design then you could check out a lot of the gemmology or goldsmithing books as they usually have "care charts" and the like to give you an idea what you can do with the more common stones.
If you're going into goldsmithing / jewellery design I highly recommend getting the book "The Jeweler's Bench Reference" as it has a lot of useful information including some basic gemmological constants and information on cleaning and care of gemstones. If you're looking for more on the gemmology side of things books like "Gemstones of the World" would be a good thing to pick up. Some of the information is a little dated in there but it has some nice pictures of gemstones both faceted and rough in many cases.
If you have any specific questions though I'm sure either myself or others on this forum would be happy to help.
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