CARLSBAD, CALIF. — With Chris Isaak performing, Madeleine Albright delivering the keynote address and jewelers such as David Yurman in attendance, the Gemological Institute of America celebrated its 75th anniversary Sunday night and chiseled out some big plans.
“One of the things that happens when you have a major anniversary is, you reflect on the 75 years gone by, but it also triggers the visionary side of us,” said Ralph Destino, the chairman of the GIA, considered the world’s top diamond-grading organization. “We’ve begun to think about where we’d like to be years from now.”
Destino said the GIA, a nonprofit organization, would continue to fortify its international presence by establishing more gemological schools abroad. It also is looking into setting up a grading system for pearls and synthetic diamonds, as well as creating its first museum.
The party, held at the GIA’s sprawling seaside headquarters here, highlighted a three-day International Gemological Symposium. The event began with flag-bearers from 42 countries walking in to John Lennon’s “Imagine,” after which Albright — the former secretary of state under Bill Clinton — delved into a speech that wove in personal anecdotes about her pin collection with a wider talk about how the jewelry trade shapes and is shaped by foreign policy.
“I’ve always loved jewelry,” said Albright, adding that she is working on a book about her pin collection for a scheduled 2009 release date. “World leaders knew that they could tell my mood by the type of pins and brooches I would be wearing.”
The event included a $50 million exhibition of gems and set jewelry on loan from private collectors and jewelers. Among the pieces was a 108-carat D-flawless diamond and diamond-studded Mercedes-Benz steering wheel, loaned from the Geneva-based Steinmetz Diamond Group, as well as a Mughal-style ring from the 1700s. The exhibition, which runs until the end of November, also showcased the Cartier Bismarck sapphire necklace from 1935 and a 1910 pearl pendant that once belonged to Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, the paternal aunt of former first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.
Museum director Elise Misiorowski said the 15 displays were intended to showcase the uniqueness of jewelry, as with the Cartier pearl-and-diamond tiara from 1908.
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“We wanted to show everything from gem crystals to cut gemstones and jewelry pieces, from antique to contemporary,” said Misiorowski.
The organization seems untainted by a scandal last year when a lawsuit accused GIA analysts of falsifying diamond-grading reports. Four employees from its New York office were fired for ethics violations, and, as a result, its president, William Boyajian, resigned earlier this year. Destino, a former president of Cartier, said the GIA had moved on from the incident.
“We have had the highest standard of integrity for 75 years, and if there was one blip in the history of the GIA, it took place last year,” he said.
The GIA now runs 14 gemology schools around the world and just opened its latest in Mumbai, India.
“We are also looking at two other locations, Tel Aviv [Israel] and Johannesburg [South Africa],” he said. “We intend to be teaching more students in more places with more professors and teaching more things.”
This includes expanding the curriculum from basic gemology, such as how to recognize and evaluate stones, to now offering business administration courses.
“We did not prepare people for running a jewelry business, which we are now doing,” he said.
Kathryn Kimmel, the association’s vice president of marketing and public relations, said the role of the GIA as a “confidence builder” had not changed since the Fifties, when it devised the “Four Cs” of diamond grading: cut, color, clarity and carat weight.
“People in India could call someone in London, and they would all be speaking the same language,” she said. “Those diamond grading reports are what many diamonds today are traded on. So when someone buys a diamond, they’ll be comfortable with more than what they’ve just been told.”
The diamond grading, which is done in GIA labs in Carlsbad, Calif., and New York, employs 700 graders working on a million stones a year. But Destino said he wanted to create greater access to those services by setting up “take-in” windows where the public, dealers or retailers all over the world can bring in their stones to be consolidated and graded.
Destino noted the GIA had partnered with several consolidators around the world to provide the service, including in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as in London, Antwerp and Geneva. Some of the international schools have the take-in windows on-site, while in other cities, the GIA has appointed consolidators and shippers in the local diamond districts.
The GIA also soon will be announcing a new system for grading pearls.
“There has so far been no scientific system for pearls, but we are about to launch one that would be adopted everywhere in the world,” he said.
Other innovations include the grading of synthetic diamonds, which has become a major force in the jewelry world. Further down the line, there also will be a permanent GIA museum.
“I envision a permanent one in a major city that would be open year-round and that would attract the attention of people everywhere, bringing a cultural component to the city,” Destino added. “We are in the planning stages now.”