The Reason Why Jewellery Makers Need To Understand Gemstone with Michelle Mccormick

Michelle Mccormick is a lecturer for Gemology and teaches a Gemology & Jewellery Studies degree course. She gave her knowledge about the reasons why jewellery makers need to understand gemstones to use them in their ranges and then how gemologists identify gemstones. 

Birmingham City University is located in the heart of Birmingham’s famous Jewellery Quarter, the School was founded in 1890. The Vittoria Street building’s historical facade conceals a contemporary environment including workshops, a specialist library, an atrium gallery and exhibition space.
She had a webinar and talked about Gemstone and overview how gemologists can identify gemstones. She also virtually walked us through at Birmingham University. On what courses they offer, what machine they are using and what students are doing.

A gemology is the study of gem material and a Gemologist is like a detective who identifies gemstones and determines their nature: whether they are natural, treated or synthetic. Accurate identification is essential to the jewellery trade and to the collector. Michelle said that using gemstone on your jewellery business is great and profitable. But she provides consideration of having a gemstone in your business.

There’s a tolerance of the gemstone and every gemstone has a Hardness, Durability, Stability to heat, Stability to light and Stability to chemicals.

Hardness is a measure of how one material can be scratched by another one. The Mohs’ scale of hardness is the recognised non-linear gauge for determining the hardness value of a gemstone.

Durability - cleavage and fracture
The durability of a gemstone considers its resistance to fracture or cleave on impact

Cleavage - Direction to breakage

Fracture - Non direction breakage

Understanding Gemstone is really important, they are very precious and powerful stones, worn to ward off evil. They have healing and medicinal powers, which protect us against the bad effects of planets. They are known to boost the spiritual power of our body, keeping us happy and healthy

This webinar was impactful and informative. Michelle made sure to answer our inquiries. She detailed all what we needed to know on Gemstone. That’s a lot of information to take in but it was  all helpful. 

You can watch the full webinar on my YouTube channel:

I will be featuring another special guest soon. Don't miss out!

Speak soon,

Kassandra xx