PHOTO GALLERY

By clicking on the coloured dots, you can activate photo galleries of mining sites as well as inclusion photos of gemstones from various countries.
Many of those photos were taken by our friend and colleague Vincent Pardieu during some of his field trips around the world.

Inclusions Gallery

The inner life of a gemstone is best appreciated using a binocular microscope. Through the lenses, one may discover an array of fascinating and intriguing features in the form of solid, fluid or gas inclusions, trapped during the growth of the crystal. Sometimes beautifully arranged, these internal features can also be very useful to the trained gemmologist as they yield valuable information on the growth environment in which the gemstone was formed. In some cases, some inclusions from certain mines and localities may be specific for that gemstone and locality and will contribute to its proper identification and classification.

Clicking on the coloured dots will reveal photos of such inclusions features in rubies, sapphires and emeralds from different mining localities in the world.

Mining Localities Gallery

Over the past decades, there has been an increasing demand, from the market place, for the determination by Gem testing Laboratories of the geographical origin of the gemstone. This exercise is not an exact science as there may be some overlaps in the properties of gemstones mined from different sources. Laboratories rely on a variety of analytical techniques such as microscopy, chemistry and various types of spectroscopy to give their best opinion on the most probable origin of the gemstone studied. Reliable samples from known sources are therefore extremely important to compare the properties of unknown gemstones with those of samples from known localities.

Clicking on the colours dots will bring you to some of these localities and offer you a glimpse of the mining operations taking place there.