s medieval times passed to modern, the relative importance of external concerns about the medicinal or talismanic significance of gemstones slowly begins to recede. The innate beauty of the gemstone becomes central. Today few people seek out an emerald to cure disease, an agate to use as a shield against the evil eye, or the amethyst to ward off drunkenness. In developing connoisseurship in gemstones, beauty has become the defining criterion.

The dawning of our modern age brought little in the way of unanimity on the issues of which gems were precious and which were not, unsurprisingly. The great gemologist Max Bauer, writing in 1904, maintains: “Minerals which combine the highest degrees of beauty, hardness, durability, and rarity — diamond, ruby, sapphire, and emerald, for example — are by common consent placed among the foremost rank of gems.” Bauer further states that “it is impossible to draw a hard and fast line between precious and semi-precious stones,” and that “the minerals that must be reckoned as precious stones are by no means fixed in number.” Why? Because, says the great mineralogist, it depends largely on “the fashion of the day.” Bauer includes as precious most transparent stones (except amethyst) and two translucent gems, opal and pearl.13

The English gemologist G-F Herbert Smith, writing twenty years later, includes among the precious gems diamond, ruby, sapphire, and all forms of beryl (emerald, aquamarine, morganite), excluding all others.14 Other writers have made different lists. All have included the “big four” but most have agreed on little else.15

Grading standards: the market
One barrier to developing connoisseurship in gemstones is that many experts, mainly dealers, maintain that there are no objective standards of judgment in the appreciation of gemstones. Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder. The aficionado will hear that phrase repeated ad nauseam. If there are no standards, then the stone that the dealer across the counter is trying to sell is obviously the best choice.

The fact is that there are very definite standards for the grading and valuing of all gemstones in the world market. The market is the place where all the sophistry and all the nonsense about beauty and the eye of the beholder get swallowed up and vanish without a trace. The same experts who contend that collectors in the West prefer opals with more blue, and Asian buyers prefer red (and that value is all in what you like), will admit that the red stone may cost four times as much as the one with a predominant blue play of color. Why?

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