Blog:Intergem 2009
from the Antique Jewelry University
By Tim Spauwen, FGA
Concentrated Quality
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With these words from Gary Roskin in my head we drove to Idar Oberstein for our own first visit of the Intergem Fair. I'd visited the gem centre before and wrote a little article on it at Gemology Online but never managed to get myself there at the time of the fair until that particular day.
Arriving on Friday, the opening day, we found the event to be held at a large, rather new looking building on a commercial boulevard just outside the Oberstein part of town. Flags and banners alongside the parking area told us it was the 25th edition of the fair. Aha, they had something to celebrate then!
Upon entering the trade fair we found out what Roskin had meant. The first stand we laid our eyes on was that of Constantine Wild where a familiar sort of blue stone sat screaming at us from a display cabinet: a 3.4ct Hauyne proved to be an excellent way of drawing attention to the stand. Wild had only recently taken the rare German gemstone into his inventory and featured a small collection of smaller stones as well, all of superior color.
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The rest of Wild's stand set the tone for the rest of the fair: big, well cut single stones as well as suites. Tourmalines were present in every color of the spectrum and old and new stock corundum, large amounts of spessartine, emerald and every other possible beryl on the planet were to be found among the inventories of the 180 exhibitioners' stands. Walking through the Idar-Oberstein fair one gets lured into the false belief that large, clean, perfectly colored gemstones are abundant. One thing is certain, there is little you can't find among the inventories of the German gem dealers and lapidaries.
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This vast array of top notch stones is not the only reason for jewelers to come to Intergem. The collective knowledge of the Idar-Oberstein lapidaries and goldsmiths is a second reason. At the fair one can find out what the technical limitations are on ones design by consulting the lapidary and goldsmith experts. Innovative cuts and both traditional and modern carvings are to be admired. Although the majority of the fair provides a marvelling insight into the world of colored stones it's not all loose gems. Several stands feature metalwork and findings and a few equipment dealers were present. One stall specialized in quality display- and storage material.
I'd hoped to find stories of new deposits but learned that most of the material at the fair came from relatively old stock or well known currently worked deposits. A new appearance in the inventory of opal dealer Emil Weis was an almost transparent yellow opal from Mali. Karl Faller, a corundum and emerald specialist, featured two Winza rubies of remarkable color. The two bright red pieces of eye candy weren't surpassed by their Burmese cousins on the color department at all.
The Idar-Oberstein equipment dealers from Otto Simon had the brand new edition of Birgit Günter's 'Tables of gemstone identification' for sale. The new version of the classic, must-have for every gemologist, determination aid is twice as thick as the old version and is completely brought up to date with new gemstones, imitations and synthetics.
One stand surprised me in particular. It was that of Vinit Rakian, owner of Global Gems who, as the only one on the fair, had an impressive collection of antique jewelry. Rakian, a 5th generation Indian jeweler, descends from a family that switched from producing quality fabrics to jewelry making around the turn of the 19th century. His ancestors became court jewelers in India and the family has been in the business since. He exemplified how long it takes to build up a large inventory of antique quality jewelry. His inventory is the product of generations of collecting and dealing antique jewelry. The object that dazzled me most was a large (~20x10mm) Kashmir sapphire set in a ring. Rakian believed the stone to be at least 200 years old.
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Some stones seen at Intergem | ||
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25 years of Intergem
October 1985 saw the very first Intergem being held in the tennis hall of the gemtown. Idar Oberstein had been a gem cutting centre for over 500 years already and a large industry has evolved since then. The area around the town was the source of nicely colored agates and the presence of the Idar bach (=stream) provided water power. This combination resulted in a gemcutting centre situated at the two townships of Idar and Oberstein.
Although the Portugese were the first to discover the gemstone deposits of Brazil during the 16th and 17th centuries it was the German immigrants that moved to Brasil in the second half of the 19th century that recognized the potential of the deposits. Stones were sent to Idar-Oberstein and it didn't take long for the German gem dealers to set-up offices in Brasil. A strong gem trading tradition between Idar and the gem bearing areas of Brasil was born which boosted economy in the German gem centre. This relation seems to be intact to this day judging by the large amount of Brazilian beryl and topaz that was displayed at the fair.
The celebration of 25 years of Intergem falls together with the joyful event of moving into a new home. The past 24 edition were held at the town's tennishall but this year the brand new fairgrounds just outside the Oberstein part of town provided the fair with a worthy home.
Intergem's young new manager Kai-Uwe Hille is proud as a peacock. It took the organisation 4 years to get the state and town to cough up the money (close to 8 million euros) and build the fair hall. The idea is to organize all kinds of events in the building. A gem industry technology fair called Gemtec will be held in May 2010 for the very first time. Further concerts, musicals and a variety of fairs and other venues will be able to find an excellent haven in the new building that has been built on the site of a former US army base.
Each and every exhibitor who I interviewed said the very same thing: "we love the new hall, it makes a very special fair even more professional looking".