The volume of detail provided in the CIBJO Blue Books was at the centre of the discussions held by the Coloured StoneCommission meeting.
The meeting was chaired by the Commission Vice President Charles Abouchar, since the Commission President Nilam Alawdeen was unable to attend the meeting for personal reasons.
Speaking to the meeting, Mr. Abouchar reported that changes to the Coloured StoneCommission Blue Book had been looked at, and adjustments were made made to bring it into line with other Blue Books.
Sector A President Roland Naftule explained that the Sector A commissions often run into difficulties relating to changes to the Blue Books. “They are extremely complicated and detailed and require a lot of work,” he explained. “Changes that are requested might cause a change somewhere else in the document. I will suggest to the CIBJO Board that any request for changes made 15 days or less before the Congress should not be allowed because there is no time for the books to be modified. Only if there are major mistakes should they be addressed in the pre-congress meetings.”
Sector A Vice President Thomas Lind said an overview of the charts, which would simplify understanding of the Blue Books, was provided at the 2014 congress. “This would be a tool for a much better overview of the contents to give jewellers and others easy access to the information in them. After the last congress, I prepared a basic chart showing the basic terms relating to gemstones. We would include in the future the clauses and their numbers so people can more easily see them in the Blue Books. We will provide a further update at the next congress.”
Mr. Naftule said the Blue Books now run 60 to 100 pages and provide a lot of detail. “To a layperson the details are too much but to a professional they are not. If we don’t have well laid out rules then we run into confusion. The rules are useful but not to everyone. A decision needs to be made if we need a simplified or more complicated book. We have talked about a simplified version for the last four years. Most countries do not use English as their main language so it is translated into local languages and it is difficult to translate them with all the details, so a condensed document makes sense.”
Menahem Sevdermish, who runs the EGL lab and school in Israel mainly for gemstones, said his lab has been quite easily implementing CIBJO’s rules for many years. “. Even for me, an expert gemmologist, the Blue Books are far too complicated. So a shortened version could be a solution. The books are perfectly correct in what they say but they are complicated.”
“The U.S rules about gemstones trading is very complex,” said Cecilia Gardner, President of the CIBJO Ethics Commission and CEO of the Jewelers Vigilance Committee in the United States “The FTC decided 15 years ago to write a plain English version which explains in simple language what the laws require from any particular part of the trade to stay in compliance with the law. A shortened version should focus on: ‘Here is what you need to do in your business practices to be in compliance with the law’.”
There was also a discussion on disclosure of treatments. Mr. Naftule explained that according to CIBJO rules most treatments fell into a general disclosure category which are generally acceptable to the trade, for example the heat treatment of corundum and the colourless oiling of emeralds which represents a very large portion of these species. But then there are other treatments, such as irradiation, which are less acceptable. However, as long as they are properly disclosed, then that is acceptable.”
It had been proposed and approved for review to eliminate the general disclosure practice, and instead require and that everything comes under a specific disclosure which should be verbally disclosed to the consumer at the time of sale and disclosed in writing on commercial documents. The Coloured Stone Commission has been asked to review this issue and recommend how to deal with full disclosure.
Photo Caption: CIBJO Sector A President Roland Naftule addressing the Coloured Stone Commission, as Vice President of the commission, Charles Abouchar, look on.