Nothing winds me up more than reading an advert where the uneducated copywriter (surely they can’t do it on purpose) describes a piece of jewellery as ‘CZ Diamond’ or ‘Genuine Lab Created Alexandrite’ or ‘Real Amethyst Lead Crystal’ or ‘Ceylon Coloured Sapphire’ or ‘Glass Fresh Water Pearls’ or ‘Natural Glass Smokey ’ or ‘glass gemstone’ or ‘decorative gold garnet’ or ‘shiny Amber colour resin necklace’ and these are just a few I have noted down this week! Some of the biggest culprits in print are airline magazines and of course many online jewellers are a law unto themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually love the fact that people use gemstone names as an adjective, but only as long as they make it clear that that is exactly what they are doing. It’s not a new problem however, as the Natural Historian Pliny the Elder (born 23AD) commented whilst writing about gemstones, ‘there is no more lucrative fraud against society’ Here are a couple of tips to avoid being misled by ignorant copywriters or those trying to deceive:
Tip 1
If a piece of jewellery is described as ‘Platinum Plated’, ‘Gold Plated’ or ‘Rhodium Plated’ and does not describe what has been plated, assume that underneath the layer of precious metal (which is probably less than a quarter of a micron thick) is just a regular base metal.
Tip 2
Even if a genuine gemstone name is being used to describe the look of a stone or its colour, if anywhere in the same sentence you find any of the following words: ‘crystal’, ‘lab’, ‘lab created’, ‘glass’, ‘synthetic’, ‘resin’ or even ‘coloured’, then the article is probably not a real gem.
