CULTURED PEARLS
The best known cultured gems are cultured pearls. These are widely accepted and the best are quite costly, but culturing has made real pearls available to women all around the world who would otherwise have had to make do with glass and plastic imitations.
The process of creating cultured pearls was discovered in the early twentieth century by a British biologist and commercialised in Japan.The market for cultured pearls developed rapidly so that now 99 of pearls sold are cultured and grown in Japan and China.
Natural and cultured pearls can only really be distinguished by X-ray which can reveal the introduced nucleus. This is because cultured pearls are otherwise formed by exactly the same processes as wild pearls.
The large scale production of cultured pearls has removed the risk from the industry, reduced costs considerably and made high quality real pearl jewellery available to many more people.
A WELL-KEPT SECRET - CULTURED GEMSTONES
I began with cultured pearls because of the many parallels with cultured gemstones and the fact that these pearls are universally accepted and known.
What is not so widely known is that cultured gemstones, grown in a laboratory over a period of three to twelve months or more, and similarly difficult to distinguish from the ‘wild’ variety, have been available since the 1930s. As well as addressing many of the ethical issues surrounding the gemstone supply chain, they also tackle some of the same issues of quality, cost and availability as did the introduction of cultured pearls. The mystery is why they have not taken off in the same way commercially.
I believe that this is largely the result of a real misunderstanding about the nature of cultured laboratory-grown gemstones, so, before you switch off, I want to emphasise that laboratory created diamonds and gemstones are real stones. They are not fake like cubic zirconium (Cz), glass and resin imitations. They are chemically, optically and physically identical to stones dug out of the ground. So much so that it is impossible for even an experienced gemmologist to tell the difference with certainty between these and high quality mined gemstones and diamonds without using very sophisticated equipment. In fact, specialist equipment has had to be created to detect more quickly the increasing numbers of laboratory grown diamonds finding their way into the supply chain illegally.
CULTURED GEMS VS THE REST
One thing we need to get clear right from the start is the difference between created, or cultured, laboratory-grown gemstones (also known as synthetic) on one hand, and simulants and imitations on the other. The terms ‘created’, ‘cultured’, ‘laboratory-grown’ and ‘synthetic’ mean the same thing and are interchangeable. The term ‘synthetic’ is often misused and given a pejorative slant.
Simulants and imitations are not the same thing as mined stones, whereas cultured/synthetic stones are physically the same in every respect.
Cultured stones As illustrated above, cultured gemstones, including diamonds, are chemically identical to mined stones. They are very difficult to tell from naturally occurring gems, and highly sophisticated equipment is needed to identify them.
There are a couple of different patented methods for creating gemstones and diamonds. Laboratory grown stones are specified as such with their own recognised classification, and synthetic diamonds have their own special GIA grading reports so that the consumer is fully aware of what they are buying.
Good quality emeralds, rubies and sapphires of a reasonable size are rare and expensive. Although growing them in a laboratory takes time, it doesn’t take as long as growing them in the ground.
It is costly to produce synthetic gems and they take time to make, typically up to twelve months for larger stones depending on the method. So, although they offer a significantly less expensive alternative, they should not be thought of as ‘cheap’, because they are not.
Laboratory created gemstones are very pure and high quality.
Synthetic rubies can look like the highest grade naturally occurring stones, and the same can be said of synthetic diamonds. As is so often the case, their greatest strength can also be a weakness, depending on what you want from your gems. Their chemical purity means that there are no natural inclusions in the stones. This is a good thing because they then have greater brilliance. The colours are clear and bright, and cultured sapphires are a particularly lovely shade of cornflower blue.
Nevertheless, some people want the variation and character which inclusions can bring to gemstones, in spite of their negative impact on clarity. This can be particularly so in the case of emeralds, where inclusions are common and are given the rather romantic name of ‘jardin’. I suspect this to be a clear case of making a virtue of a necessity, and I’m happy to have a lovely large ethically produced emerald which I can afford.
Apart from the significant cost advantage of synthetic gems there is also the security of knowing that these gemstones are just about the most ethically sourced you can find. No ‘Blood Diamonds’, no funding genocidal wars, no questionable mining or other working conditions, no ecologically damaging extraction or production methods and no risk that child labour (or forced labour) is involved.
They are worth considering if you are one of the increasing number of people to whom these matters are top priority. In the end, it is down to personal preference. To some people, it is the look of a piece of jewellery which matters, not whether or not the stones came out of the ground, and to them, the lower cost is an added advantage. To others it is the mystery of the natural stone which captivates, for which they are prepared to pay a large premium and overlook the problem of supply.