A part from Thailand’s guarded secret on heat treatment of gem stones, the country’s next best-kept secret is unmatched cutting and polishing techniques, says Anant Salwala, a veteran gem dealer and head of Thai Lapidary International Co.

“Thais have developed expertise drawn from long experience, non-com-placency and aversion to mediocre finishes,” said Anant, who himself has shared the less forbidden half of the secrets with allegedly incorrigible prison immates, the blind and impoverished hill people.

“Our people spend more time to improve imperfect surfaces until the right specification is met. That or they won’t proceed to the next piece,” he said.

A prominent and vocal figure on the lecture circuit, the semi-retired Anant, 66, was recently awarded the royal decoration, Coin of the White Elephant, for his numerous contributions to the kingdom’s gem and jewelry industry.  

Anant likens his lectures to a form of merit-making, involving travels to remote hills in northern Thailand, university campuses and internationally-organized conferences in Israel, Belgium and Sri Lanka where his unrehearsed comments have amused or angered people.

“I’m not one to let an unfair argument go by. I respond immediately and try to weaken the other man’s points,” said Anant, criticizing recent attempts by a group of American dealers to rename light-colored rubies to “pink sapphires.”

“The name of a gemstone has more value than what it is worth,” he told JewelSiam. “Just as it is unacceptable to refer to pink or yellow diamonds as pink or yellow carbons, so it is foolish to call rubies anything else.”

Anant recalled attempts by British dealers following the Second World War to discredit Thai rubies by calling them “red corundum” in efforts to promote rubies in Burma, then under colonial rule.

“That was taking advantage of the English language to limit trade with Thailand,” he said.

Seventeen years ago, demonstrating basic gem cutting to hill people in the northern Thai province of Mae Hong Son, Anant recounted: “I hand-carried complete sets of equipment, one manually-powered, the other with wheels. Relying on a Border Patrol Police interpreter, I urged the Karens who previously grew opium to concentrate on cabochons instead of the more difficult faceted cuts since a cabochon with 48-hour work behind it can meet export quality. That worked.”      Teaching murderers, thieves and drug addicts warms him because there is “deep satisfaction one gets from teaching a trade that could one day help pay the bills,” Anant said.

Of the blind, he praised: “They have tremendous memory, sharpness for sequence and very dexterous.”