I'm reading a fascinating book at present: Buried Treasure: travels through the jewel box, by Victoria Finlay. The author spent some months travelling around the world researching the stories behind various types of gems: she covers amber, jet, pearl, opal (one of my favourite gems - I'm looking forward to that chapter), peridot, emerald, sapphire (another favourite), ruby, and diamond. She's got a really engaging style and manages to find out some incredible stories of the history of the gems she's reseaching. She's also written another book called Colour: travels through the paint box that we read last year - similar concept, but looking at natural pigments used in art.
So far, my favourite titbit was finding out why jet workers were called "red devils": apparently, they used powdered rouge mixed with paraffin on the wheel to polish the jet, and it 'sprayed round the workshop like a massacre'. I also learnt why pearls look better when worn: they absorb some of the oils and warmth from the human skin and it helps maintain their lustre - so much so that some upper-crust households had servants "warming the pearls" to make sure that they looked their best: 'visitors to an eighteenth-century [English] household might sometimes, when calling for afternoon tea, have seen the housemaid wearing more elaborate jewels than her mistress.' (p.98) I've never had the problem of pearls losing their lustre, as I've never owned any.... but it is useful to know "just in case"!
Pachyderm
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