Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the gem industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
I had had more than the usual share of reverses as a broker in Paris, for which I had had only myself to blame. However, I thought that my ‘luck’ would change if I changed my surroundings. Where should I go? America? Australia? England? I had learned English; it seemed about time that I should practise it in an English-speaking country. It was no toss of the coin that decided me to go to London. The fare there was less than to Perth in Western Australia, or New York. I packed my few belongings without regret. ‘England is the place for me,’ I said.
Jet is the stone associated with that Channel crossing. I do not remember if it was rough or smooth, only that no less than five of the lady passengers wore complete sets of jet ornaments. They were all Englishwomen. Although this fashion may at that time have prevailed in France also, I never noticed it until I came to England.
Anxious to improve my accent, I got into conversation with the husband of one of the jet-wearers. Discreetly questioned, he was rather pleased to enlighten me with the information that this kind of stone came from Whitby in Yorkshire and that it was greatly prized in England for mourning jewelry.
He insisted that jet was a gemstone. ‘The decrees of fashion,’ I remember declaiming at him, ‘may raise a green cheese to the status of a planet, but the textbooks still lay it down that this black substance is a fossil wood, a king of immature coal, and not very hard at that—‘
‘Please do not let my wife hear you say that,’ he said in a frigid tone, ‘for she is excessively proud of her jet ornaments.’ Thereupon he left me abruptly and I saw him no more.
As I gazed intently at the rapidly approaching white cliffs of Dover, a voice spoke in inner ear. It said” ‘There are many ways of putting people against you. But the most sure way of all is to insist on telling them the unpalatable truth.’
After a day or two I found myself in a typical Bloomsbury boarding-house, dining in the company of four Indian law students, a City solicitor, an unfrocked Catholic priest, a newly arrived Capetown stockbroker and his wife, and the divorcée of a brilliant barrister who within the year took silk. The table was presided over by Mrs Francis, the landlady, a tall passée blonde with, as I discovered later, a kind heart. At first I had some difficulty in following the animated conversation, for I was still rather rocky in my knowledge of English, to say the least of it. But presently I realized that the conversation was turning on a green stone in the ring of the South African lady which she described as a ‘malacoot’.
A ‘malacoot’? I had never heard of such a stone. My professional curiosity was aroused. I begged for a sight of the stone. With the greatest of pride and affability she had it passed down to me. In indifferent English, but with the greatest complacency in the world I pronounced it (in a double sense) to be a ‘malachite’, a mineral found in great abundance in the Ural Mountains, which is sometimes used for ornamental tables, mural inlays and decorations.
The South African lady was not greatly impressed. Her stone, she said, was a ‘malacoot’, guaranteed to be nothing else by the reputable Capetown jeweler who had sold it to her. What did I know about South African gems?
At this point tact belatedly overtook me and I allowed her to make her point. But later on, when the ladies and most of the men had adjourned to the drawing-room (this was still the custom even in Bloomsbury boarding-houses), those who had remained, suspecting that I knew what I was talking about, drew me out on the subject of ‘malachite’.
I was only too eager to shine. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Malachite is a very common substance. I don’t think it occurs in South Africa at all. It is a gemstone only by courtesy. Mineralogically speaking it is just a copper carbonate. I have handled large plaques of it and beads by the bushel, I assure you, gentlemen.’
For further information of those who want to be able to distinguish malachite from any other green stone, I may here state that it is a bright green, grained with black, and is a stone which takes on a good polish.
Among the number of less well-known semi-precious stones which at one period kept the family pot boiling was the peridot.
I must confess here that although I had long known the stone by name and had seen it included in lists of potential gem material, I was not at all acquainted with its appearance until some time in 1903 when a German lapidary paid me a visit. I had been recommended to him as one likely to prove of considerable assistance to him, but to my disappointment he revealed that his entire stock-in-trade consisted of peridots, several pounds weight of them, of every size and shape.
‘And what do you expect to do with a stock of that kind in London?’ I asked.
‘Sell it for good English money,’ he replied with an assurance that was rather disconcerting, for I had no doubt whatsoever that a German lapidary on his first visit to London had nothing to teach me about the class of gems saleable in that city.
‘I am sorry to disillusion you,’ I said, ‘but candidly we shall only be wasting our time.’
‘Before the day is out you will think differently,’ he replied. ‘Will you be my broker for the day?’
As my new acquaintance was a good-natured twenty-one stone Teuton with a single-track mind, I did not wish him to feel that he must return to Germany without having had at least a chance of showing his goods to the trade. He would discover for himself fast enough that London was not peridot-minded.
Yet, before the week was out, my German friend had to send an urgent message home for fresh supplies. So much for my cocksureness. We managed to cash in on a short-lived fashion, however. The wave of popularity that had raised the olive-green transparent lustrous stone, despite its softness, into general favor soon subsided. This is usually the way with the lesser semi-precious stones; unlike the aristocrats, which always have a world-market, the small fry among gems depend very greatly upon the vagaries of fashion.
There are several localities where peridots are mined. Burma is one of these, and New Mexico and Queensland are others, but in the opinion of those best-informed the Egyptian peridot excels all others. In these latter days the stone is little seen in jeweler’s shops, but no doubt sooner or later they will be on view again.
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