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Gems and Gemmology pp 67–90Cite as

Gem Treatments, Synthetics and Imitations

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Part of the Short Introductions to Cultural Heritage Science book series (SICHS)

  • The original version of this chapter was revised: New figures are updated with new captions and few figures are updated without changing their captions. The correction to this chapter is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35449-7_6

Abstract

When examining a piece of antique jewellery or object for its authenticity, it is not only important to know about the types of gemstones that existed at the time, but also about the various types of treatments, imitations and synthetic gems. Treatments involve all processes used to modify the appearance of gem materials in order to make the more attractive and desirable. Some treatments go back to Minoan times. Imitations are materials looking similar to the more valuable gem material supposed to imitate but having a different chemical composition and crystal structure (e.g., blue glass and sapphire) and appeared simultaneously to gemstones from the very early times. Synthetic gems are laboratory grown materials with essentially the same chemical composition (differences between natural and synthetic gems are at impurities level) and crystal structure of their natural counterparts and are commercially available since the beginning of nineteenth century.

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Change history

  • 08 December 2021

    The original version of the book was revised to replace a number of figures as follows.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire Français de Gemmologie (LFG), Paris, France

    Stefanos Karampelas

  2. Gubelin Gem Lab, Lucerne, Switzerland

    Lore Kiefert

  3. Department of Mathematical, Physical and Computer Sciences, University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Danilo Bersani

  4. Department of Archaeology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Peter Vandenabeele

Authors
  1. Stefanos Karampelas
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  2. Lore Kiefert
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  3. Danilo Bersani
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  4. Peter Vandenabeele
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Karampelas, S., Kiefert, L., Bersani, D., Vandenabeele, P. (2020). Gem Treatments, Synthetics and Imitations. In: Gems and Gemmology. Short Introductions to Cultural Heritage Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35449-7_4

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