Music Welcome to Snewscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us at snewscast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share us with a friend. This episode is brought to you by Color and Glow. Tonight, we'll read all about gemstones from the book Jewels and the Woman, Written by Marion Osteier, and published in 1958. If you enjoy this episode, be sure to check out our other jewelry episode featuring this author titled The Story of Jewels, which aired in November 2022. Gemstones are classified into different groups, species and varieties. For example, Ruby is the red variety of the species corundum, while any other color of corundum is considered sapphire. Other examples are the emerald, green, aquamarine, blue, red barrel, red, goshanite, colorless, heliador, yellow, and morganite, pink, which are all varieties of the mineral species, barrel. Gemstones may also be classified in terms of their water. This is a recognized grading of the Gem's Luster Transparency or

Brilliant's. Very transparent gems are considered first water, while second or third water gems are those of a lesser transparency. Let's get cozy.

Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now, take a few deep breaths. On the basis of beauty, stones cannot be divided into precious and semi-precious for, from stone to stone, there is continuous range of color and glow. Nor indeed can price be the one criterion, for here many elements produce variety. Although the term gem of the first water is reserved for the flawless blue-white diamond, as the carrots of the single stone increase the flawless ruby and the emerald become even more costly, and varieties and special specimens of other stones, such as the fire-op and imperial jade, move up into comparable range. For certain individuals, of course, a particular stone will have associations of sentiment that render it more precious in the non-technical sense than another stone in the category of precious. It is then tradition rather than any inherent value that sets a secondary label, semi-precious, on all but five of the stones used for human adornment. Let us call these five the gems to distinguish them from the other stones. The gems There is no doubt that the five gems, diamond, ruby, emerald, sapphire, and pearl, have grown more fully than all others into our ways of living. They have become, as I shall indicate in this chapter, adornments not only of our persons but of our speech and writing. They are used not only in figures of jewelry, but in figures of speech, to express human beauty or eminence or virtue. The poet and the orator, as well as the monarch and the lover, have utilized the glamour of the gem, diamond. The Prem in Human Imagination is the diamond, the hardest of all stones. The word diamond captures the significance for it is from Greek adamas, meaning unconquerable, the tameless stone. The diamond is also the only gem that is entirely composed of a single element. It is carbon, which also appears in its more common and less costly forms as soot, jet, and coal. The diamond is pure carbon crystallized in regular octahedrons, eight-sided figures. For a long time, one word was used to mean both the diamond and the load stone, the natural magnet. the word changed because the natural magnet, attracting things to it, was thought of as the loving stone. The diamond is the beloved stone. Most diamonds at their best are colorless, with perhaps a bluish glow. They may also be blue, green, violet, less often red and black. The black diamond is usually unwanted for jewelry, but is used by lapidaries and others for cutting, grinding and polishing polishing hard stones. If a jeweler speaks of a Matura diamond or a Salon diamond, he is using an old trade name for a zircon. Similarly, a Welsh Irish Cornish Quebec or California diamond is likely to be an attractive piece of rock crystal. True diamonds were known in Asia, at least as far back as 900 BC. India was the homeland of the gem for many years. The best stones in the 16th century were those cut in Hyderabad, India. Rich findings were made about 1720 in Brazil, in Borneo in 1738, elsewhere, diamonds were discovered and less significant amounts. But by far the richest hordes were unearthed in 1867 in South Africa, which is still the world's greatest source of diamonds. Although the Losage is the characteristic shape of its crystal surface, the rough diamond stone is found in many shapes and cut into great variety. Because of the tears that the great tragic actress, Sarah Bernhardt, rung from the audiences at his melodramas, Victor Hugo presented her with a tear-shaped diamond. Among the many literary references to the diamond, though Elizabethan playwrights were particularly fond of the expression, diamond cut diamond, meaning in that aristocratic age, when great man matched with great. In the more democratic 19th century, particularly with regard to those most democratic of spirits, the pioneers, such as the Americans opening up the West, it became popular to speak of an uncouth, unpolished, but fundamentally fine fellow as a diamond in the rough. Lovers at all times have linked this most brilliant of stones with their fair one sparkling eyes. One said that, wherever he went in the world, he found only his beloved. If to far India's coast we sail, thy eyes are seen as diamonds bright. Thy breath is amrex spicy gale thy skin is ivory's soft white. There are several sayings which, though they refer to the diamond, by interactions speak of mankind. Thus there is a warning to the person who is heedless of dress or decor or of the office or home in the remark, a fine diamond may be ill-sat. There is, on the other hand, a challenge to pretense, or perhaps a warning to a person about to select an employee or a mate in the Chinese proverb. A diamond with a flaw is better than a perfect pebble. Ruby. The Ruby is a variety of corundum. The Sanskrit word,

Kharavinda, was limited to the Ruby. The Ruby is a variety of corundum. The Sanskrit word, Kharavinda, was limited to the Ruby. But we today use the word corundum to mean any form of aluminum oxide. Corundum is next in hardness, though far inferior to the diamond, and a hard granular form of it is used in grinding and polishing. In its pure transparent form it is, according to its color, the ruby, the sapphire, the amethyst, or the topaz. The Latin word rubour means red, and the crystalline corundum that is a ruby takes shades from pale rose pink to a deep crimson that borders on the purple. The color is determined by the nature of the oxide and the gem sometimes has a light silken sheen. A flawless deep red ruby is one of the rarest and most costly of gems. Because of its great value, the ruby has often been used as a term of comparison for human worth, implying the highest excellence. The Scottish poet William Dunbar used it in pious thought, hail, reddulent ruby, rich and Radius, Hail Mother of God. Among precious rubies, greatly desired is the star Ruby, a gem so flawed that it catches the light as a sun with six out-shooting rays. The sun is fair," said the poet Drummond of Hawthorn on a fine summer's morning, when he with crimson crown and flaming rubies leaves his eastern bed. The star ruby with its three crossbars making six rays of light,

has been thought by these lines of light to signify faith,

hope, charity, health, happiness, and wealth.

Thus it is doubly prized for its good fortune and for its beauty.

The deep rubies of Pigeons blood or ox blood red come from Burma. Those from Siam may be purple-ish brown, from Sailan, more probably pink, a Brazilian ruby, a topaz, a Siberian ruby, a tourmaline, and a ballas ruby, a Spinell. Most frequent of all comparisons with gems are references to the ruby lips of beauty. Close after these comes illusions to the rich red of wine, as when Fitzgerald tells us in his translation of the rubyat of Omar Kayam, but still a ruby kindles in the vine and many a garden by the water blows. Robert Herrick, the poet of youth in springtime, who advises us to enjoy lovely things while they are here. Gather you rose buds while ye may. In a note of more solemn warning says to a fair maid, that ruby which you wear, sunk from the tip of your soft ear, will last to be a precious stone stone when all your world of beauty is gone. What the maiden answered is not on record, but it is sadly pleasant to think three hundred years later that somewhere today that Ruby is still beautiful and still enjoyed. Sapphire Sapphire is the current form of a Sanskrit word, meaning deer to Saturn, an old in God, whose reign was regarded as the golden age. The stone has been known since earliest times, although what the ancients called Sapphire was probably the Lapis Lazuli, or Sapphire being called by them the Hyacinth. It is hard to tell, however, just what gem is intended when in the song of songs the The Queen of Shiba, sings of Solomon, her beloved. His hands are as gold rings set with barrel. His belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. Our sapphire is a bluish transparent variety of native crystalline aluminum oxide. The same corundum that when it is red we call a ruby. The sapphire may be sky blue or corn flower blue and shade through the lighter hues to an almost colorless stone called white or water sapphire. The sapphire is often used as a figure for the stars or for blue eyes, those eyes, those sparkling sapphires of delight. Now glued the firmament with living sapphires. This last line is by Milton from Paradise Lost, which he dictated to his daughters when he was blind. The poet Gray pictures Milton as becoming blinded by his great vision. He passed the flaming bounds of place and time, the living throne, the sapphire blaze, where angels tremble while they gaze. He saw but blasted with excess of light, closed his eyes in endless night. While the sapphire at its best still captures the blue of a cloudless sky, It brings with it today a vision of more serene beauty. Emerald The Emerald is the most precious of the large barrel group of stones. It has been deemed precious from ancient times. Cleopatra's Emerald minds are still being worked. A flawless, deep green emerald of good size is extremely rare. Such a gem normally is tablet cut. The emerald also may be pierced for use as a bead or engraved. In Egypt, the usual carving was a scarab, Cleopatra possessed one. In India, the carving often was a god. The word emerald before the 16th century was Esmeraldus, the Sanskrit word for the gem was Maraqta. As recently as the last century, Ralph Waldo Emerson summed up the chief sensuous impressions of the Orient, color, taste, and smell, Smiradis, sugar and musk.

There are few colors at once as striking and as restful as the green of an emerald. It seems to have the depths of the pure rays in a calm ocean. Colrich in the ancient mariner used it for another form of the ever-changing waters, and ice, mass-tie, came floating by as green as emerald. Tennyson used it for the widespread carpet of the land, a livelier emerald sparkles in the grass. In a lighter vein it has been used to suggest the color of unripe fruit as in Eugene Fields versus on the peach. A little peach and an orchard grew, a little peach of emerald hue, warmed by the sun and wet by the dew it grew. The green of the emerald makes it in many minds the most beautiful of colored gems. Pearl.

The pearl is the only one of the five gems that is the product of life. It gives body to the eternal paradox that out of evil springs good, out of deformity,. For these reasons the pearl is most frequently of all gems woven into symbols of man's activity. Honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house," said Shakespeare, as your pearl in a foul oyster.

A pearl, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, is a necrous, concretion formed within the shell of various bivalve mollusks around some foreign substance, I.E. a grain of sand, composed of filmy layers of carbonate of

lime, interstratified with animal membrane. Trying to isolate the intruding irritant, the oyster secretes a sticky fluid, the fluid At heartens, another layer of it is secreted in the pearl grows.

The genuine pearl oyster is the Melia Greena Margarita Fera. Margarita Fera means pearl bearing from which comes the name Margaret, meaning pearl. Other mollusks may also form pearls, though not usually the varieties served in the months within are. Freshwater pearls come from mussels. Mary Queen of Scots had a necklace of 52 graduated pearls, all of them fetched out of Scottish rivers. Pearls are prized because of the beautiful luster that glows upon them, pink or even blueish grey and iridescence over the basic white. Rareest are the large black pearls, which make a beautiful center drop on a brooch or a necklace. The pearl is hard and smooth in texture, beautiful to see and pleasant to feel. The usual shapes in which a pearl grows are round, button, pair, and burrow. Which in this use merely means irregular. The round pearls are used mainly for necklaces, which must be threaded in silk or plastic or other such material. Any metal may darken and dull the beauty of a pearl. Button pearls are used in ear clips, studs, broaches and rings. pear-shaped pearls are attractive as pendants.

The use of baroque pearls depends upon their shape and size. Pearls are assorted and matched with great care, according to their size, shape and color. The matching of a string of pearls may be a quest of 20 years. Sometimes a jeweler will hold the pearls until he has a match necklace, graduated or of equal size. But it is also a challenge to a woman who enjoys jewels to buy a few pearls so she can wear in various ways while watching for enough of their peers to form a string. The lustrous inside of the oyster shell, formed of the same material as the gem, is called Mother of Pearl. A blister pearl is a flatish excrecence that, instead of being inside the soft oyster, adheres to the shell, it may be detached and used. pearls are very tiny pearls, weighing less than a quarter of a grain. For ages one of the most highly prized and priced of gems, the pearl has become less costly, not because of changing taste or of successful simulation, but because man has Let's learn the secret of the stimulation of the oyster to make it create a pearl. The best natural pearls come from the Persian Gulf and the waters of Australia, but it is the Japanese who have most fully developed the technique of inserting a foreign body in the oyster, so that it then carries on under its own living power the process of making a real, but what is called a cultured pearl. Man proposes and the oyster disposes. From the gates of Pearl through which St. Peter allows the elect to enter heaven to the guardians of Orient Pearl a double row of the smiling mouth, the Pearl has been caught into proverb and poem. At the beginning of this century the Pearl figured in a a popular song. The hours I've spent with you, dear heart, are as of a string of pearls to me. I count them over every one apart, my rosary. As far back as the Bible, a thing of supreme quality was referred to as a pearl of great price. And the same book, Matthew, issues the famous warning, neither Cassie or Pearls before swine. In other ways, the pearl has been used as a symbol. The poet Swinburn, in sentimental mood, exclaimed, the world has no such flowers in any land and no such pearl in any gulf of the sea as any babe on any mother's knee. The rarity of the stone and the difficult task of the Pearl Diver are used symbolically and in epigram by Dryden. Errors like straws upon the surface flow, he who would search for pearls must dive below. American poet William Russell Lowell, father of the Supreme Court Justice of the same name, wrote in his copy of the Rubeyat of Omar Kayam. These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, each softly loosened as a rounded moon. The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread. Other stones The other stones, though less esteemed in lore and letters, have many claims to beauty. One shining specimen may adorn a jewel, or several of a kind, or combinations of various stones may create effects that rival those of the gems. The four native stones among the five gems are usually translucent, while most of the other stones are opaque. A transparent or translucent stone, if it is cut as a prism or if its crystalline structure is right, may break light into rainbow hues, and catching these rays may shoot them around in varying interplays of sparkle and color. Though pake stones, on the other hand, often smooth of surface, are colored in ways that seem to snare the light and send it out with added power and color. Special characteristics add to the beauty of many of these stones, the main varieties of which we shall now glance at in alphabetical order. Agate. The Agate is a variety of Chelsenini. It is named from the river Akades, in Sicily, a heartstone of striped or cloudy coloring. It is often yellow or tawny brown. Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet uses the I get in a ring to indicate the size of Queen Mab, who, before Freud, brought us other fancies, was the bringer of dreams. She is the fairy's midwife, and she comes in shape no bigger than an Aggett stone on the forefinger of an alderman. In her coach, Queen

Mab gallops by night through lovers' brains and then they dream of love, or courtyers' knees that dream on curtsy straight, or lawyers fingers who straight dream on Curtsy's straight, or lawyers' fingers, who's straight dream on fees, or ladies' lips, who's straight on Kiss''s Dream. Alex Andrite. The stone Alex Andrite was given its name from Alexander II, Zarevall the Russia's, in whose realm it was found. It has the interesting quality of being dark green and daylight, but under artificial illumination glowing a brilliant rad. These were the national colors of Russia, the green standing for Felicity, the rad for humanity, Amethyst. The Amethyst is a variety of quartz, often called the Queen of Quartz, Purple or Violet in color. It is one of the earliest stones found in jewelry and has been used in every period.

It is especially attractive in combination with gold and pearls. you you you you you