OCTOBER 18, 2016

With the 2016 CIBJO Congress set to open in Yerevan, Armenia, in eight days’ time, agendas and related documentation for the various sessions and meetings that will take place during the event are now available online. Contained in a Digital Binder, they can be downloaded from the dedicated congress website. To download the Digital Binder, please CLICK HERE.

The schedule of the CIBJO Congress includes a series of meetings of different working groups, called sectors and commissions, each of which focuses on a different sector or field of interest in the jewellery industry. The Digital Binder includes the agendas and documentation related to each of their sessions, as well as those sessions that encompass the entire CIBJO membership.

The congress will take place at the MERIDIAN Expo Center in Yerevan, from October 26 to October 28, with pre-congress meetings starting on October 24.

Serving as the official venue for the meeting of the CIBJO Assembly of Delegates, the CIBJO Congress gathers the members of national jewellery and gemstone associations from more than 40 countries and representatives of many of the industry’s most important commercial bodies. During the event, the organisation’s Diamond, Coloured Stones, Pearl, Coral, Precious Metals and Gemmological Blue Books, which are industry’s most widely accepted directories of uniform grading standards and nomenclature, are discussed and updated.

This is the first time that a CIBJO Congress is taking place in a Central Asian country. It is being hosted by the Armenian Jewellers Association (AJA).

OCTOBER 12, 2016

With two weeks to go to the opening of the 2016 CIBJO Congress in Yerevan, Armenia, on October 26, 2016, the eighth and the final instalment of the CIBJO commissions’ pre-congress Special Reports has been released. Prepared by the CIBJO Coral Commission, headed by Vincenzo Liverino, the report describes upgrades to the Coral Blue Book of accepted standards, practices and nomenclature, plans to create a comprehensive Coral Guide; and activities undertaken in 2016 to promote sustainable coral harvesting.

The Coral Book, which is the most recently introduced of the CIBJO Blue Books of accepted industry standards and nomenclature, having been ratified at the CIBJO Congress last year in Brazil, has been extensively upgraded over the past year, with the addition of photographs, illustrations and tables, as well as new sections about coral sustainability and regulations for harvesting in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean.

The Coral Special Report details a seminar that CIBJO organized at the Hong Kong International Diamond, Gem & Jewellery Show in March 2016, together with the Italian Trade Commission, which concentrated on the implementation of environmentally sound practices in coral harvesting and pearl farming.

“A cornerstone of CIBJO sustainable business approach is responsible environmental practices throughout the gemstone and jewellery industry. This is most certainly the case in the coral sector, where the essential elements include the protection of the biosphere, the sustainable use of natural resources, production transparency and product disclosure, and committed management and compliance with local laws,” wrote Mr. Liverino.

To download a full copy of the report, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

OCTOBER 5, 2016

With three weeks to go to the opening of the 2016 CIBJO Congress in Yerevan, Armenia, on October 26, 2016, the seventh of the CIBJO commissions’ Special Reports has been released. Prepared by the CIBJO Pearl Commission, headed by Kenneth Scarratt, the report details improvements to the Pearl Blue Book of accepted standards, practices and nomenclature; the development of the CIBJO Guide for Classifying Natural Pearls and Cultured Pearls; technological advances in pearl identification; responsible environmental practices; and a new law in Japan that is designed to bolster the country’s pearl sector.

In an industry that has long struggled with a range of different and sometimes confusing grading systems, the CIBJO Guide for Classifying Natural Pearls and Cultured Pearls represents an effort to place descriptions of all types of natural and cultured pearls in a single document, providing information on how to assess such things as lustre, colour, surface appearance, shape and size. An advanced draft of the guide will be presented during the congress in Yerevan in October.

The report reviews two recent technological developments that will assist in the identification of pearls, including powerful 3-D software that has been developed by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), which is able to ascertain the exact cause of a natural pearl’s formation, and the neutron imaging of pearls, which is being experimented with by the Swiss Gemmological Institute SSEF.

“With the growing sophistication being employed by some to create ‘pearls’ that challenge the various identification techniques used in gem laboratories, it is always good to read reports about the increasing sophistication of the identification techniques themselves,” wrote Mr. Scarratt.

To download a full copy of the report, PLEASE CLICK HERE.