The Jeweler's Directory of Gemstones: A Complete Guide to Appraising and Using Precious Stones From Cut and Color to Shape and Settings Paperback – Illustrated, September 6, 2012

Great images and info. Not fully read yet but I plan to

I am an amateur, when it comes to jewelry design and I am always curious about the innate qualities of the materials I am working with as well as how to arrange and present them to best advantage. I'm impressed with this book in all aspects: Judith Crowe is an expert gemologist with a master designers eye. I am continually delighted with the explanations, the history of usage and especially the fine layout of every single page included in this book. The gemstones and the jewelry chosen are wonderful examples that spark imagination. Well done, Ms Crowe!

I am a GG and this book makes it easy to explain to your customers how to determine the quality of gemstones; and also how you determine whether or not they are natural or man-made.Great book and easy to read.

A good first resource if you're looking to gain general knowledge about gemstones. The book says that it covers pricing, it doesn't, what it does do is give a guideline about what makes stones more or less expensive, but no real reference of price range. At around 100 pages I'm not disappointed, great images and the info is over-all very good. Finished it and handed it off to a buddy who has similar interests!

I've been a hobbyist jewelry studeng for some little while now, and what sets this book apart is the section on using each gemstone... this is the part that tells you how to approach setting the stone into jewelry, how hard or brittle the stone is and what features of the stone might make setting it easier or harder. Other books may give you more scientific/ gemological detail, a greater range of stones, and a better idea of price ranges. If you want to know what your stone is, whether it's a good specimen of its kind and if you paid a good price for it, this book may or may not tell you that. BUT... if you know what stone you have, this book will tell you how to care for it, and, if you're crazy enough to want to set it yourself, this book might just tell you how best to do that, and give you some idea whether, just this once, you should hire it done by someone who's already gone around that learning curve...

I have a "library" of jewelry (fine, costume, new & vintage) books and THIS, to me, is imperative to understanding how to go about LOOKING at a possible gem & asking the right questions to help me determine what it really is. I DON'T use it to appraise anything. I use it, though, to learn why many gems, semi-precious stones, fakes, achieve status. If you want an extensive methodology for determining the value of "something" skip this text. But, for ME, it's a must-have for helping to learn even more about what makes an "item" valuable OR not.

Very good book with great information.

Good reference book with vibrant picture and references, however, the book arrived damaged and extends half way through the book. Damage is on the bottom of the pages and quite noticeable.