Entrance
Strategy
It isn't easy to
force copper into feldspar. So when gemologist Robert James said copper
diffusion was the real cause of red and green in Mexican feldspar sold as
natural on TV, and made the official gem of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, no one took him seriously—until
he started snapping pictures to prove his point
By David Federman, Editor-in-Chief,
Colored Stone
Ever read
Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People"? It's a 19th century play
about a doctor who discovers that his town's central source of income, its
famous health spa, has poisoned waters and must fight an establishment in
denial to warn the world at large.
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For the last few months, gemologist Robert James, president
of the International School of Gemology in San Antonio, Texas,
has found himself in a situation very similar to that of Ibsen's
whistle-blower doctor. He has been charging that tons of feldspar sold on
TV and the Internet as all-natural were, in reality, artificially colored
by copper diffusion.
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These allegations have pitted him against some of the
world's leading gem labs which were sent this material to test for
treatment and, finding none, issued reports saying it was natural. Sellers
of this suspect feldspar brandished these lab reports as defense against
James' accusations. Like Ibsen's doctor, James soon found himself a pariah.
And no wonder. A lot was riding on the all-natural status of this feldspar.
[Feldspar is a complex gem group divided into two branches: orthoclase and
plagioclase. Of interest here is the second group which is arbitrarily
divided into six parts, based on the increasing ratio of calcium to sodium:
albite, oligoclase, andesine, labradorite, bytownite and anorthite. TV
feldspar was sold as both andesine and andesine-labradorite. From this
point on, we will refer to the feldspar in question as
"andesine," even though some gemologists familiar with this
material insist it should be called "labradorite."]
First, millions of dollars worth of it were being sold on major
shop-at-home TV networks. Second, this andesine had been adopted as the
official gem of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. If the color was artificial, the
ensuing scandal would be global in scope.
Determined to make his case, James disseminated incriminating photographs
via the Internet that left those who saw them little choice but to
entertain the thought that maybe TV andesine owed its color to some sort of
gimmickry after all. In early May, these caught-in-the-act photographs
convinced Colored Stone,
which had long harbored suspicions of its own about this feldspar, to
publish an article sympathetic to James's findings on its Web site.
Surprisingly, the magazine received only one letter critical of James'
science. The remaining correspondence was overwhelmingly supportive. We
encouraged James to continue his research.
In June, James decided to write a show-all/tell-all report on TV and
Olympic Games andesine that detailed his research methodology and findings.
When he offered Colored Stone
exclusive first publication rights, we jumped at the opportunity because we
felt pretty sure James would supply us with gemological confirmation of our
own suspicions.
This is when things went wrong—or was it right? You be the judge.
Believers
in a world where everything happens by design and predestination may find
the next part of the Robert James saga of great interest. Because of
previous delays in Internet publishing, Colored
Stone made the premature decision to convert James' report into
Web-ready text. We should have waited until after it had been finalized.
But, quite frankly, we wanted to be able to go 'live' with the story as
quickly as possible.
On
July 22, a Web technician accidentally sent the as-yet unedited report to
every subscriber on Colored Stone's
opt-in email list. After calling James to notify him that his report had
been unintentionally released, we published a terse disclaimer the next
day, explaining 1) that the report had been released prematurely and 2)
that Mr. James' views were not necessarily those of the company. The
disclaimer wasn't meant, as some subscribers wrote, to be a retraction. It
was straightforward boilerplate meant to admit we goofed.
Keep
in mind the following: Colored Stone
had lobbed a live grenade into the middle of the market it covers, for the
report argued and, to us anyway, made a convincing case for what many in
the trade already feared: that TV and Internet red and green andesine sold
as Asian in origin and all-natural in color was neither. So what was it?
The View from Malvern
I
need to digress here for a moment. Readers must understand the parallel
evidence-gathering processes that persuaded Colored Stone to report James' findings in May. Before
we even knew that James was stirring up a hornets' nest, we already
suspected a potential scandal. Here's what we had learned long before we
knew of his sleuthing.
For
starters, we had received reliable tips in 2007 that in all likelihood the
TV andesine was not as purported, from the Congo
or even Tibet and Mongolia.
Our sources—including both a geologist who had studied the material and a
dealer who had bought large quantities of it—were willing to bet the
material was Mexican. Why?
First,
Mexico
was the only known country with a deposit of transparent feldspar capable
of supplying enough material for sustained large-scale TV, Internet and
Olympics marketing campaigns. Except for Oregon, there was no other known
significant source of the kind of material needed for such gargantuan
commercial efforts.
Second,
the very nature of the Mexican material convinced us treatment was required
if it was to be sold in red and green varieties. For those not familiar
with Mexican feldspar, it is homogeneously yellow—with nary a trace of red
or green. If this feldspar was to be sold as red or green andesine, the
color would have to be induced. How?
This
is where things got complicated. Experts versed in treatment who tried to
induce red and green in yellow feldspar told us they had failed in their
attempts. So while they shared our suspicions, they could not confirm them.
But just because they failed didn't mean others hadn't succeeded. Our
suspicions were not allayed.
Now
let's skip to Tucson 2008 where I conducted a seminar on current
gemological issues. There renowned treatment expert Ted Themelis told the
audience that Thailand's master gem-color processors had developed a means
to diffuse heavy elements into gems to induce major improvements in stone
appearance. This method was a refinement of the light-element beryllium
diffusion method used to convert Madagascar sapphires into
"new-find" padparadscha around 2000. True, copper is a
transitional element and not "heavy" in the sense Themelis meant.
Nevertheless, I felt I had grounds to once again pursue my suspicions about
TV andesine.
Those
doubts only deepened when I learned that no one had ever been able to
obtain certified Congolese, Tibetan or Mongolian andesine rough from which
the new red and green "all-natural" andesine was being cut. I
began to wonder if the "new-find" market mythology that
surrounded TV andesine wasn't simply a variation on the new-find mythology
used to explain the sudden profusion of fake-color padparadscha a few years
earlier. Was the new find simply a new furnace used to artificially color
gems?
Shortly
after my skepticism peaked, Colored
Stone's and Robert James' paths crossed.
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After Tucson, I couldn't shake
my suspicion that a derivative Far East
"bulk diffusion" technology was responsible for the color in TV
andesine. If I was right, treaters were forcing copper into stones through
surface-breaking cracks at near-melting point temperatures for prolonged
periods to produce rare reds and greens. According to one source, a buyer at
a shop-at-home TV network, a Japanese observer of the process reported it
consisted of three 30-day high-heat and copper-diffusion cycles. This is when
I learned James had been leaking out photographic evidence confirming the
same suspicions via two Web sites—www.yourgemologist.com and www.schoolofgemology.com. As purchasers of this
now-suspect andesine discovered James' photos and findings, they sent him
stones for scrutiny. Convinced by immersion cell testing that stones were
diffusion-treated, James broke several stones that he bought and tested them
using a Raman microscope. His suspicions solidified into certainties. Let's
follow James' trail of evidence-gathering.
By the time James began openly expressing his doubts about the all-natural
status of TV and Olympics andesine, some sellers were admitting that stones
were treated—but purely by heating. That didn't make sense. Convinced TV
andesine was Mexican in origin, James knew it to be strong in iron and
deficient in the coloring agent of copper needed to produce red and green
colors. So what good would mere heating do? James set out to find if stones
had been altered using a combination of heat and copper diffusion.
After collecting more than 100 specimen stones direct from TV and Internet
sellers, James raised enough money to purchase a Raman microscope for
fine-tuned chemical analyses and spectra. Comparing his specimens to known
samples of Mexican material, he found all were, in his words, "virtually
identical." Poof! There went the validity of claims that the material
was from Africa or Asia.
Next, James ran immersion tests of the material—including four stones sold as
"Olympic Andesine," the official gemstone of the 2008 Beijing
Olympics. All showed green cores and red rims. "What are the chances of
this occurring in every andesine I tested?" James asked himself. The
most likely way that there could be such consistency of stone interiors, he
theorized, was if the red resulted from copper diffusion.
James went back to his microscope and examined stones for any tell-tale
internal similarities. He found twinning, also called "lamella,"
but which he nicknamed "ribbons." What, he wanted to know, caused
this internal phenomenon?
The
Shots Seen Round the World
"Ribbons"
are tiny tubular fissures that run through feldspar, often breaking the
surface. If stones were subject to copper diffusion, James felt it only
logical that some would show filler material in these cracks. Suspecting that
this filler would be most evident in lower-quality stones with numerous
filled fissures that had escaped notice by sellers, James went on the
Internet and started bidding for inexpensive auction goods. Sure enough, he
found filler material crammed into the tiny tubular openings of these
"liquidation" stones. His photos of these filler-caked cracks were
the centerpiece of the report submitted to Colored
Stone in late July and accidentally leaked to email subscribers.
To his credit, James sent the report with these dramatic photomicrographs to
leading establishment gemologists for their reaction. One of them, Lore
Kiefert, head of the American Gem Trade Association's Gem Trade Laboratory, admitted
they indicate the presence of some unidentified but suspicious material that
she had not previously observed in feldspar. She wants James to submit actual
samples of the material he studied to her for further study.
Joel Arem, well-known gemologist and author of the highly-praised "Color
Encyclopedia of Gemstones," was more unequivocal. In a statement sent to
Colored Stone, he wrote as
follows: "I have seen the report by Robert James on "Olympic
andesine" and other bits of his research data. As long ago as 2003 I had
information that led me to believe that the huge volume of red/blue-green
"andesine" coming out of China was artificially
color-enhanced. I already knew the material was labradorite and not andesine,
because I had tested it myself. If the sellers were mislabeling the very
species, what other mischief was afoot? I applaud James' thorough approach to
this issue and agree with his results. I do still remain open to information
proving the existence of small quantities of natural red labradorite from Asia."
Other gemologists like Kiefert also hold out hope for a small Asian find of
all-natural material which was the source of stones they tested and found
kosher. For now, however, the onus of proof that such material has been found
in any quantity whatsoever remains on those who sold it—not those who
questioned its legitimacy.
In the Aftermath
Once
James' report was circulated around the world, its impact was immediate and
dramatic. Of course, it helped that GIA seemed to be concurring with James'
conclusions. Days after our release of his findings, we received the Summer
2008 issue of Gems & Gemology
containing a brief report (pages 166-7) on tests of a single 1.30-carat
"red andesine" from China
by four French gemologists. Their photomicrographs of the stone also showed
what they described as suspicious "red color concentrations around
surface-reaching channels." In other words, they saw signs of treatment.
Next,
the influential Asian Institute of Gemological Studies posted James' report
exactly as it appeared in our dispatch on their Web site. What's more, the
Gemmological Association of New Zealand sent a laudatory note to Robert James
about his study and asked for permission to reprint it in their quarterly.
Suddenly,
it seemed as if the gemological world was doing an about-face and accepting
the reality of artificially-colored red andesine.
That's
when former merchandisers of this material started to admit that it was,
indeed, treated. Thai Gems, a major Internet seller of red andesine,
reclassified the material as colored by "bulk diffusion Fe/Cu."
James
was being vindicated.
What's
Next?
The
TV andesine scandal is particularly alarming because it suggests a new
ubiquity of high-tech diffusion treatment for which detection is difficult.
James is worried that this process has been applied to other copper-bearing
and copper-colored gemstones.
You
can guess which one he has in mind: cuprian elbaite now being sold worldwide
as "Paraiba" tourmaline. James is
fearful that many African tourmalines have been diffused with copper to
legitimize their classification as "Paraiba."
His
preliminary tests, he says, would seem to confirm his fears. As you can see
from the following photographs showing color cores and rims eerily similar to
those found in copper-diffused andesine, Asia's
alchemists may be working the same kind of false wonders with tourmaline that
they have with feldspar.
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Plagioclase feldspars, as a group, are probably the most
abundant minerals on earth and are essential constituents of nearly all
igneous rocks. This group is a "solid solution series", with
sodium aluminum silicate (albite) at one end, and anorthite (calcium
aluminum silicate) at the other.
The
exact ratio of sodium to calcium in any given plagioclase feldspar crystal
varies according to the chemistry and growth conditions when it formed. The
series was long-ago divided by mineralogists, for convenience, into 6
distinct species. This division is basically arbitrary - there could have
been 4 species designated, or 10, or any other number. The
"definition" of one of these feldspars is nothing more than the
range of Na/Ca ratios that it represents. The species names are therefore
irrelevant. All that matters is the ratio of sodium to calcium in the
structure.
In
the middle of the series (from 30% Ca to 90% Ca) there are three
"labeled" minerals: andesine, labradorite and bytownite. Optical
properties vary (approximately) linearly with composition. It is ridiculous
to argue whether a given feldspar crystal is labradorite or bytownite, for
example, when the only physical 'distinction' between these two minerals
can be as little as 1-2% sodium versus calcium in the structure!! Property
variations this size can even occur within a single zoned plagioclase
crystal!
Since
all these feldspars have the same structure and crystallized from a magma,
their amenability to diffusion would not be significantly different. We may
therefore conclude that the species "labels" applied by gem
dealers to these feldspars have no bearing whatever on the possibility of
treatment and the fundamental issue of disclosure.
--Joel Arem
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