Old jewelry keeps secrets. A blue stone in a 1920s filigree ring might be a sapphire, or a lab-made stone that was fashionable at the time. Both can be beautiful, but you deserve to know which one you're buying. So before anything is listed, it goes through the same routine on my bench.
1. Metal first
Hallmarks are checked under magnification, then the metal is tested. Only solid gold and platinum make it into the shop. Gold-filled and plated pieces are set aside.
2. The refractometer
Every transparent gemstone bends light by a specific amount, called its refractive index. Reading it narrows a stone down to a short list of possibilities in seconds.
3. The polariscope
This tells me whether a stone splits light in two (doubly refractive, like sapphire) or not (singly refractive, like spinel or garnet), another clue that separates look-alikes.
4. UV light
Some stones glow under ultraviolet light and some don't. The reaction can point to a gem's identity, and it can reveal fillers or treatments.
5. The microscope
Under the Leica microscope, inclusions tell the stone's story: natural crystals and fingerprints, or the curved growth lines of a lab-made stone. These tiny landscapes are some of my favorite things to photograph, and you'll see them here.
What you'll see in every listing
What the stone is, whether it's natural or synthetic, any treatments I can detect, and the era of the piece. If something can only be confirmed by a gem lab report, I'll say so.