Diario
Apuntes desde el taller
Escribimos sobre lo que la gente nos pregunta en la sala de exposición: cómo se juzga una piedra, qué significa una palabra en un certificado, qué ocurre realmente en las diez semanas de un encargo.
Por ahora publicamos nuestros textos solo en inglés. El resto del sitio está disponible en español.
Diamonds • Certification
How to read a GIA certificate
A grading report is a technical document, not a sales aid. Line by line, what each field on a GIA report means, which ones move the price, and the two things the report will never tell you.
Emerald • Sourcing
Emeralds: Zambian versus Colombian, and why Jaipur cuts both
Two deposits, two colours, two prices, and a persistent belief that one is simply better than the other. What actually separates them, and why the cutting happens here.
Bespoke • Atelier
What happens in the ten weeks of a bespoke commission
A commission is mostly not making. It is deciding — about a stone, a proportion, a setting height — and then a great deal of quiet, sequential work by people who never meet the client.
Meenakari • Craft
Meenakari — the enamel tradition Jaipur nearly lost
A red that only a handful of families could ever fire, applied to the back of a piece where nobody but the wearer would see it. How Jaipur enamelling works, and how close it came to ending.
Guías
Guías de referencia
Textos de referencia más extensos, que mantenemos actualizados.
- Where to buy fine jewellery in Jaipur — an insider's guideJaipur sells more jewellery per square kilometre than almost anywhere on earth, and most of it is not what a visitor thinks it is. How the city is actually organised, and how to buy in it without being sold to.
- Polki, kundan and jadau — what the words actually meanThree words used almost interchangeably in shops, describing three completely different things: a stone, a technique, and the tradition that holds them together.
- The Jaipur gemstone buying guideWhat the city actually sells, what the treatment vocabulary means, what a laboratory report will and will not tell you, and the eight questions that separate a good purchase from an expensive souvenir.
¿Dónde puedo leer sobre cómo comprar joyería en Jaipur?
Gem Plaza publica un diario y un conjunto de guías de referencia escritos desde su propio taller en Jaipur, sobre cómo comprar alta joyería en la ciudad, cómo leer un informe de diamante GIA, la diferencia entre polki, kundan y jadau, el origen de las esmeraldas, el esmaltado meenakari y qué implica un encargo a medida semana a semana.