News from the synthetic front:

            Cementing its status as one of the big four colored gemstones along with ruby, emerald and sapphire, tanzanite is about to be honored with a synthetic equivalent. A hydrothermal version of the hot selling stone is currently under development by the Russian company Tairus and will hit the market at a date to be determined.

            “It should be out next year, but I couldn’t tell you when next year,” said Tim Tumey of Pinky Trading, Bangkok distributor of Tairus products.

            Already, some Bangkok stone dealers are preparing for the apocalypse.

            “It will spoil the market,” says Harshad Patel of Ambe Gems. “It’s definitely bad news,” says  Sanjay Goyal of STS.

            However, the reality is likely to be much more mild. Yes, dealers will have to be a lot more careful that the lots of tanzanite they purchase are not garnished with manmade stones. But no, it is unlikely that the steadily escalating prices of tanzanite will suddenly collapse due to the synthetic version’s arrival.

            “Historically, the market dips a little after a synthetic is introduced,” say Tumey. “But prices for the middle and higher end stones should remain about the same.”

            Currently, the most widely found synthetics are high-end stones like ruby, emeralds, alexandrite, and various varieties of sapphires (blue, pink, white, yellow and padparadscha).

            These synthetics are made by three types of processes: flux, flame-fusion and hydrothermal. Because the process produces no gas bubbles, flux synthetics usually make the most convincing synthetics, but they are also the most expensive and time-consuming, taking up to a year to make one batch of stones. While this is true with most types of stones, there are exceptions. With emeralds, for example, the situation is reversed. Clean hydrothermal emeralds are usually more similar to natural stones than flux emeralds, because of the more convincing emerald color.

            At the low end, probably the two most troublesome synthetics are amethyst and citrine, byproducts of the production of quartz for components in electronics industry. Once these producers were able to make quartz, they were only a few coloring agents away from making synthetic amethyst and citrine.

            While Garry Du Toit of the Asian Institute of Gemological Sciences says that while only the clean synthetic amethyst and citrine is convincing, enough clean material has been made to throw the market for the stones into chaos.

            Says Thomas Chatham of Chatham Created Gems: “Amethyst is a classic example of the marketplace not attacking the real problem”—which is, he says, the people who intentionally sell man-made stones as natural.

            In addition to the stones listed above, synthetic peridot and aquamarine can also be found—with tanzanite well on the way.

            When it comes to synthetic tanzanite, Chatham is not yet sure that the time is right. While he has tinkered around with it in his laboratory, he says: “Right now, I don’t think it’s worth doing. The natural isn’t expensive enough.”

            Of course, with tanzanite prices rising about 30 to 50 percent per year over the past two years and no let-up in demand in sight, it looks like it is only a matter of time before that magic level is reached.

            While the ever-increasing quality of today’s synthetics are giving the labs headaches, local laboratories like AIGS are developing a formidable arsenal of equipment to detect the real thing from the fake. In most cases, that means that the major problem is not really identifying synthetic stones, but of paying for the process of identifying them. This problem is particularly acute with low-end stones like amethyst and citrine.

            In terms of determining the natural from the created, one tough challenge is synthetic white sapphires. “They’re difficult to detect,” says Du Toit. “They’re small—and the smaller the stone, the less chance you have of finding any inclusions.”

            The labs have a rule of thumb, says Du Toit: “The cleaner it is, the more likely we are to be suspicious.”

            At AIGS, the different synthetic varieties seem to arrive in spells—take, for instance, Kashan rubies. “A year ago, one out of every ten rubies we tested ended up being a Kashan,” says Du Toit. “Today, the ratio is closer to one out of 100.”

            Over the years, synthetic producers have had to fight hard for their rights in a free market. Chatham has been a very visible crusader in such matters.

            “I don’t expect any accolades or special benefits for our products, but I also don’t expect any disadvantages,” he says.

            Chatham last year ended his biggest crusade—a ten-year battle against the American Gem Trade Association which was finally settled in June 1994 when he was given permission to display he wares at the AGTA’s Gemfair in Tucson last February.

            “It’s probably the most expensive booth in the history of the world--$250,000 for a ten foot booth,” says Chatham. The $250,000 represented the total legal fees he incurred during the battle.

            He said that the final straw came when he saw that cultured pearls had been honored in the AGTA’s prestigious Spectrum jewelry design awards. Clearly, Chatham sees a lot of similarity between his product and cultured pearls. “It wasn’t fair that they had been accepted and not us,” he says.

            A major problem producer of synthetic stones face is one of language. Natural-stone dealers and industry associations have pressed producers of man-made gemstones to clearly label their products as “synthetic”. However, the producers feel that the negative connotations of the word turn off consumers and make them less likely to buy their products. Chatham, for one, prefers the term “created gemstones.”

            “I’II never use the word ‘synthetic’,” says Chatham. “But I’ll also never misrepresent my product.”

            Another producer with a problem of nomenclature is Prem Thapar of AG Japan, who was peddling his “crushed and recrystalized” AGEE emeralds at the Bangkok Fair in September.

            AG Japan has been criticized by gemologists, including Dr. Henry Hanni of the Swiss Gemological Institute (SSEF), for violating CIBJO trade rules by selling their product as “AGEE Emeralds” instead of “AGEE Synthetic Emeralds” and inadequately describing their production technique (JewelSiam, Oct-Now 94).

            AG Japan’s promotional material describes the product as “Columbian rough emerald crushed into fine powder and purified with a laser process and recrystalized with a hydrothermal process…no chemicals are added at any time.”

            However, Hanni’s studies found high concentrations of chlorine in AGEE emeralds, which refuted the “no chemicals added” claim. Even if chlorine hadn’t been found, the “no chemicals added” claim would be an impossibility: since AGEE emeralds are made by the hydrothermal process, water is used as a transport agent and will have to show up in the stone.

            Still, the guidelines of most gemological associations seem to be made to be flouted: like traffic laws in Bangkok, people know they are there, but not many seem to pay much attention to them.

            “I’m not going to change the way I do business,” says Thapar, adding “I want to thank all you magazines for writing about my product. It’s helped me do much better business.

            Several ideas have been offered for synthetic producers to help make their products more easily identifiable.

            Among these are laser inscriptions of the stones, or some sort of “chemical signpost” that while invisible could be used to easily identify synthetic stones. Still, no solution is in likely to constitute an unfair infringement on synthetic producers’ right to do business, while the second proposal wouldn’t be cost-feasible for the majority of the trade because they would still have to take the stones to laboratories for identification.

            Chatham suggests a more direct approach to cutting down on abuse of his product—“outing” stone dealers who are selling synthetic stones as natural. “After all, everybody knows the people in Bangkok who are cutting the stuff,” he says.

            In the end, however, director of AIGS Ken Scarratt says, “The best thing [synthetic stone producers] can do is fully inform the labs by sending them samples. Then it should be incumbent upon the labs to find trade-related solutions.”

            Among the solutions Scarratt suggests is to more widely disseminate information in mainstream Jewelry trade publications. Currently, says Scarratt, much of the discussion of synthetics and their methods of identification is limited to scientifically-oriented publications like Gems and Gemology.

            But the first step is getting synthetic producers to cooperate by sending in their products.

            “There are a number of them who regularly send their materials to the labs,” says Scarratt. “Then there are others who put their products on the market first and see how much they can get away with.”

            Companies like Chatham and Pinky Gems have regularly cooperated with the laboratories, handing over new products for identification and study in advance of their release date. These companies insist that the stability of the natural-stone market is just as important to them as it is to natural-stone dealers.

            After all, says Tumey of Pinky trading, “If the value of the real material goes down, then the value of the synthetic goes down.”

            Chatham concurs: “Without the natural market, I am dead. I need that natural stone up there on a pedestal. Then, I’ll take care of the low end.”