Published December 29th, 2006
in Reading.
In 2000, Tom Zoellner purchased a diamond engagement ring and proposed. His girlfriend said, yes and then, suddenly, walked out of his life and made Tom the owner of a used engagement ring. Instead of hitting the self-help shelves of his local bookstore, he hit the road traveling to diamond mines in Africa, Canada, India, Brazil, and Russia to discover the true worth of this shining gem.
He traveled to Japan to understand how diamonds were linked with engagements and delved into the history of our own American romance with the diamond ring. He gained entry to DeBeers, the London diamond merchants. He visited fine jewellery shop with starry-eyed couples. Through all of his travels, he searched for an answer to the question, How has one stone created empires, ruined lives, inspired lust and emptied wallets throughout history? A diamond version of Susan Orleanss The Orchid Thief, The Heartless Stone is a journey to the cold heart of the worlds most unyielding gem.
Published December 29th, 2006
in Reading and Jewelry.
Throughout history, precious stones have inspired passions and poetry, quests and curses, sacred writings and unsacred actions. In this scintillating book, journalist Victoria Finlay embarks on her own globe-circling search for the real stories behind some of the gems we prize most. Blending adventure travel, geology, exciting new research, and her own irresistible charm, Finlay has fashioned a treasure hunt for some of the most valuable, glamorous, and mysterious substances on earth.
With the same intense curiosity and narrative flair she displayed in her widely-praised book Color, Finlay journeys from the underground opal churches of outback Australia to the once pearl-rich rivers of Scotland; from the peridot mines on an Apache reservation in Arizona to the remote ruby mines in the mountains of northern Burma. She risks confronting scorpions to crawl through Cleopatra’s long-deserted emerald mines, tries her hand at gem cutting in the dusty Sri Lankan city where Marco Polo bartered for sapphires, and investigates a rumor that fifty years ago most of the world’s amber was mined by prisoners in a Soviet gulag.
Jewellery is a unique and often exhilarating voyage through history, across cultures, deep into the earth’s mantle, and up to the glittering heights of fame, power, and wealth. From the fabled curse of the Hope Diamond, to the disturbing truths about how pearls are cultured, to the peasants who were once executed for carrying amber to the centuries-old quest by magicians and scientists to make a perfect diamond jewellery, Jewels tells dazzling stories with a wonderment and brilliance truly worthy of its subjects.
