SUBJECTIVITY IN GEMOLOGY
A Stone Dealer's Search for the Perfect Certificate
By Ron Ringsrud
It started with Shakespeare and a phone call. No, the phone call was not from Shakespeare. It was an emerald broker and friend, Jairo Sarmiento who called me while I was in Bogota: "Ronald, Señor Fulano has an important stone and he wants you to take it to the United States and document it." How do you document a rare and fine stone? You get a professional photograph made, send it to G.I.A. for a certificate and then, if it is really worthy, send it to the prestigious Gubelin Laboratory in Lucerne, Switzerland for one of their certificates.
The stone was worthy - everyone who saw it was enthusiastic. It was one of the only cat's-eye emeralds ever seen coming from Colombia. It was also the largest at 22 carats and was graced with Colombia's finest slightly bluish-Green color as well as a vividly defined eye that seemed to hover above the stone. The GIA technicians took a photo of it for 'Gem News' and the Gubelin lab called it "exceptional".
I felt that the documentation was still inadequate. It must have been the mysteriousness of the eye and the fineness of the color that left me thinking to myself that there must be a way to further document such a magical stone. How can we come closer to describing it?
Then, while sitting in a leather armchair in my study, I was reading some lines from a Shakespeare poem called A Lover's Complaint in which a woman of refinement and experience remembers how her suitors would give her gifts of gems which were accompanied with poems...
...And deep-brained sonnets that did amplify
Each stone's dear nature, worth, and quality.
- A Lover's Complaint
Fantastic! The idea seemed so wonderful - to validate gems with poetry! I felt like someone had just given me a bar of gold. Within a month I had researched poetry, visited three libraries, and spent almost $1000 hiring poets to sit with certain fine gems and write about the subjective experience. The cold objectivity of a gemological lab certificate can be balanced by the pure subjectivity of a poem. And since most gems are given as tokens of love, why not accompany them with a well-thought sonnet to enrich and add romance to the gift?
Of all the sciences, gemology tends to involve much more than just the usual analytic, deconstructive and intellectual phases of which science concerns itself. While science avoids subjectivity and aesthetics, gemology's object of study, the gem, is nothing less than a thing of beauty, allure, timelessness, rarity, uniqueness, wholeness, perfection of color, and fineness: all immeasurables - all beyond the realm of science. Many of the world's best gemologists know this to be true and some of them are able to use that to their advantage.
One such scientist is Eduard E. Gubelin, a world-renowned gemologist who habitually goes beyond the scientific boundaries to wax poetic when talking about the color or internal features of a gemstone.
Gubelin's contribution to the science of gemology is broad and undisputed. Also, his contribution to the subjective aspects of gemology is recorded in the numerous uniquely descriptive and poetic phrases that adorn both his published papers as well as his laboratory certificates. While appreciation for his objective/subjective style of gemology is universal, the gemological institutes of the world do not teach the art or poetry of Gubelin's approach, they only teach the science - for this sensitive and delicate subjectivity cannot be taught; it is only cultivated and developed by seeing, in the lifetime of one's career, thousands of gems, rare and unique, whose beauty and allure touch one so deeply that it inspires the poet inside to express in words the immeasurable.
From his book The Internal World of Gemstones (Zurich, 1979), Doctor Gubelin describes the inclusion features of emeralds in poetic detail:
"The saturated green of a crystal clear green mountain lake is the image of the most beautiful emeralds. Such a peaceful mountain lake magnetizes our gaze into its depths. As we sink into it we attain a world where, in the shimmer of a distant greenish light, fronds of weed cast shadows, rigid growths stretch their limbs like chandeliers... This green landscape has long been familiar to jewellers as 'garden' and fine gardens with delicate ornamental plants are highly prized."
As a gemologist myself, my experience with fine emeralds has caused me to seek all available knowledge that pertains to this alluring stone. Modern gemology will satisfy the intellect but the heart must find sustenance as well. For knowledge to be complete the intellect must be transcended and the poetic sensiblilties must be brought to bear in this study. Therefore I have enlisted the efforts of two poets, an American and a Colombian, to appreciate deeply the form, color and attraction of fine emeralds (common and world class) and to then write about the experience. The poets were asked to simply write about the experience that viewing the gemstone created.
The two poets are Nancy Berg of Santa Monica, California, winner of the National Endowment of the Arts 1992 Poetry Fellowship as well as a writing Fellowship from Stanford University. She is currently a member of the California Poets in the Schools program. From Bogotá, Colombia is the poet and writer Sergio Alvarez whose book, Poemas de Amor y Desamor has been recently published. His short stories have won national contests and have appeared in Dell Comic Books as well as Colombian television dramas and comedies.
What follows are two poems that have been inspired by the subjective experience of gazing into several fine emeralds. Rather than simply reading on, the author suggests changing speeds here in order to enter the poetic mood. Imagine slowly unfolding a stone paper on a fine gem. The first poet, Nancy Berg was fortunate to see the highly rare and alluring cat's-eye emerald.
Blessing of the Cat's Eye Emerald by Nancy Berg
Now that the want cook
has you stalking
holy mist
on a green mountain lake;
now that you haven't slept
once all summer,
trailing one's streamer
of restless
light;
now that you orbit
a cat's eye emerald,
sweeping through sacraments,
weak-limbed with love;
know that this radiance
will never leave you -
once you are blessed
you are blessed to the bone.
In the first poem I envision a green mountain lake with a phenomenal holy mist. The second poem brings images of masculine gods squeezing green light in their dirty fists, leaving the dark carbon lines of the trapiche's star. It is obvious that in poetry as well as in scientific explanation the authors have chosen words carefully to convey much meaning. "A streamer of restless light" is certainly no less heavy with meaning than "depletion of beryl atoms during formation". It may even be said that poetic metaphor gets created and tested (through reading, hearing, feeling and publishing) just as rigorously as scientific theory - which is a form of metaphor itself.
The validity of using poetry depends only on how much it fits into our culture's current paradigm. In another place or another time the poet's vision might be the only explanation of the gemstone and the scientific description would be non-existent or perhaps studied in solitude by rebellious outcasts.
In the conclusion of his essay 'On the Sense of Beauty in Natural Sciences' Werner Heisenberg makes it clear that even in the 'hard' science of physics there is a place for subjectivity; indeed it is the subjectivity that is sensitive to discovering Truth:
"Certainly, rational thought and precise measurement belong to the work of the natural scientist just as a hammer and chisel belong to the sculptor. But in both cases they are instruments and not the inspiration". Fortunately, as gemologists, we only have to gaze at a fine gem to have the same realization: that specific gravities and R.I.'s are but the tools of a discipline whose inspiration penetrates to the fullness of one's heart.
Bay area poet and writer Susan Griffin (The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender & Society 1996) feels that in modern society the status of poets should not be inferior to the status of scientists. Poetic metaphor is just as important a way of seeing reality as scientific metaphor. "You could say that in a certain sense poetic metaphor is more precise than scientific metaphor because poetic metaphor includes the mysterious. And it is often more real too because so often you, the reader, can see the poet seeing. Heisenberg's Principle, a late development in science, was early in poetry." (from Poetry Flash Apr.-May 1996 'Twice Beautiful').
The immeasurable qualities of a gem: beauty, allure and timelessness, have been shown to require something more than just standard gemology to validate them. Poetry is offered as a means to go beyond the boundaries of objectivity and to approach that timelessness. Gemologists who have mastered their professions should turn their attention to poetry for a new level of validation and appreciation of gems.
There are places where gemology is taught without mention of the romance of gemstones. Most institutions, including the G.I.A., however, maintain a rightful place in their course material for the romance and lore of colored stones. Perhaps in the future, the standard gemological laboratory will have not only gemologists creating certificates for the validation of the objective qualities of a gem (R.I., Specific Gravity etc.) but also have poets on hand for validating the subjective aspects as well. The poems thus created at the lab would follow the gem from owner to owner, decade after decade, as part of the complete documentation of the gemstone.
With this end in mind a network of 40 poets nationwide has been created by the author to provide subjective poetic validation for gemstones. A similar project is under way in Colombia as well. These poetic aestheticians will work with jewelers and dealers in awakening a new appreciation of the validity of subjective rather than objective documentation.
Finally, from Skystones (Piedras del Cielo) by Pablo Neruda, a 'deep-brained' poem and favorite, about transitory men and eternal gemstones:
One must speak clearly about clear stones,
about dark stones,
about ancestral rock, about the blue ray
that languished prisoner in sapphire,
about the statuary boulder with its irregular
enormity, about the underwater flight,
about the emerald's green fire.
Now consider the pebble
or sparkling commodities, the ruby's virgin lightning
or the frozen coastal wave
or sequestered jet that chose
the negative brilliance of shadow,
I ask, mortal and facing,
from which mother did they come,
from which volcano, ocean or river of sperm,
from which extinct flower, from which aroma
interrupted by glacial light?
I am one of those transitory men,
who fleeing from love to love,
remain charred, scattered body
and kisses, black words
devoured by shadow:
I am not able to fathom so many mysteries:
I open my eyes and see nothing:
I touch earth and continue the journey
while bonfire or flower, perfume or water,
become crystalline races,
eternity's labor of light.
Alternative final poem by Neruda - this one describes emeralds Neruda saw on a 1970 visit to Colombia.
When everything was high,
high,
high,
there waited the cold emerald,
the emerald gaze:
it was a vigilant eye
at heaven's center,
center of the void:
the emerald that looked on:
unique, hard, immensely green,
as if it were an ocean-eye,
an immobile water-eye,
drop of God,
cold victory,
tower of greenness.
back to main page . . . . . . . . . . back to emerald information
(From Maria Jacketti translation)
REFERENCES
Barriga Villalba A.M. (1948) Estudio cientifico. In Esmeraldas de Colombia, Banco de la Republica, Bogota, Colombia.
Callois, Roger (1985) The Writing of Gemstones, Univ. Press of Virginia
De Goutierre, Anthony, (1996) Wonders Within Gemstones, Gemworld International, Northbrook Ill.
Gubelin E.J., Koivula T.I (1986) Photoatlas of Inclusions in Gemstones, ABC Edition, Zurich.
Heisenberg, Werner (1971) Physics and Beyond, Harper & Row, New York
Jacketti, Maria, Trans. (1993) Heaven Stones, Cross Cultural Comm. N.Y.
Neruda, Pablo (1971) Stones in the Sky, Copper Canyon Press
Osborne, Harold, (1968) Aesthetics in the Modern World, Weybright and Talley, New York
Porter, Anthony & Lanna (1992) Spirits in Stone, Ukama Press, Berkeley
Rader, Melvin M. Ed. (1935) A Modern Book of Esthetics, H. Holt & Co., NY
Subriamanian, A.V., (1988) The Aesthetics of Wonder, Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi