Lois Berger’s Pearl Walk

Strands of Nucleated Chinese Pearls at the Sea Hunt booth

Pearls are not just beautiful, they are complex. There are many ways of growing pearls these days and a seemingly endless number of ways to label them and quantify their beauty and value. All of this was made even clearer to me during the recent AGTA GemFair Tucson when I participated in Lois Berger’s annual “Pearl Walk.”


Lois Berger

An Afternoon with the Hope and Wittelsbach-Graff Diamonds

Gary Roskin's "Evening with the Blues" presentation at AGTA GemFair

Gary Roskin, one of the world’s leading gemologists as well as a longtime educator and writer, was one of 10 gem experts who examined and photographed the Hope and Wittelsbach-Graff diamonds—the most famous blue diamonds in the world—to determine whether their origins were the same.

The event took place Jan. 21, 2010, inside

Etienne Perret Demonstrates the Durability of his Ceramic Jewelry

White ceramic ring with colored diamonds

I first wrote about Etienne Perret’s ceramic jewelry in November during the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show.

At the recently concluded AGTA GemFair Tucson, his gem ceramic jewelry lines were on full display and doing quite well, according to Etienne and his son, Michael, whom I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time. This time Etienne