|
|
|||
ARTISTIC GEMS
Gemstone artist John Dyer has won 36 cutting awards since 2002 with his trademarked designs. |
|||
|
|||
Unusual Artworks for Jewelry Designers and CollectorsStory by John Dyer / Photos by Lydia Dyer / Gems courtesy John Dyer & Co.
The ZigZag cut is faceted with V-shaped grooves alternating on the pavilion to make a culet that zig-zags down the gem. |
|||
|
My father, David Dyer, and I started Precious Gemstones Co., a gemstone dealership, in 1996 due to my early love of gemstones. Neither of us was a gem cutter at the time. I was 16 or 17 and my father had done many things, but nothing gem or jewelry related. We traveled to Asia, Africa, South America, and other locations to find good values and a diversity of rough gemstone materials. We gave some of the rough gems to a faceter for cutting, but we were outraged by the price charged and the poor quality of the cutting. Indeed, two of the three emeralds were so badly faceted that, after we were unable to sell them for a number of years, we had to have them re-cut. Finally, I decided to take matters into my own hands and purchased an UltraTec faceting machine. I am a "self-taught" faceter in the sense that I never took classes or had a mentor. I did pick up tips from books and conversations, but much had to be discovered for myself by experience and experimentation. I mainly use the UltraTec faceting machine for the flat faceting. There are also a great variety of other tools that I use, some of which were made in my father's machine shop and some that we purchased. I use these machines for various phases of the cutting process. Often, multiple machines will be used on the same gem. |
|
|
| I first entered a gem in the AGTA Cutting Edge Awards in 2000. I did
not win that year and then waited another year or two to try again. I
won my first award in 2002 with a Pakistani peridot, which took second
place in the Flat Faceting Category.
In 2005 and 2007, I swept the Flat Faceting Category at the AGTA Cutting Edge Awards, taking first, second, third, and Honorable Mention. In 2010, I won my first German award, taking third place in the Idar-Oberstein cutting competition. Most recently, I won three second places and one third place awards in the 2011 AGTA Cutting Edge Awards and the first place in the Specially Cut Gems division and Best of Show (tied) in the 2011 Lapidary Journal Gemmys competition. The main focus of our business is selling my artistic gems to jewelry designers and collectors. Because of the desire to keep them as unique as possible, I have not published any designs. For more information, visit www.johndyergems.com. |
|||
|
From the Rock & Gem magazine, May 2011 Issue. Reproduced with permission. Click here to download PDF. Click here to read online in the Rock & Gem magazine. |
|||
