Tucson is here, and the alarm bell has been yet another time heavily shaken and perhaps stirred... does anyone have first hand experience with this so called color infusion stones, in particular tourmalines... the reason I ask is that I feel I do not have the whole picture nor a complete scientific background to elaborate on his claims, so feel free to clarify to me what he is talking about (yes you know who I am talking about - and it is not Voldemort)... Reference to Ted Themelis is given that should support his claims, can someone elaborate on this? If it do not do any good to my brain, perhaps others may benefit from this clarification... yes?
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"Please forgive me for I have sinned, I just faceted another gem..."
Joined: Thu Dec 13, 2007 3:42 pm Posts: 4091 Location: the Netherlands
It's a dreamed up term by a troubled individual. In an effort to scare people into buying his courses and memberships to his 'newsletters' the guy was desperately trying to profile himself as the big savior who was exposing new treatments. When it turned out that his claims of tourmaline, tsavorite and what have you not diffusion were bogus and most likely were simple dyeing (if anything) he made up two new terms in an attempt to confuse the [insert expletive] out of those not fully in the know and save his ass: dyefusion en infusion.
That's it. Ted Themelis has since made it clear that he feels his name was used where it shouldn't have.
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:22 pm Posts: 21602 Location: San Francisco
As I understand the term "dye-fusion" it is synonymous with dying. Simple as that.
Dying inexpensive, commercial quality gems is not a new process. Perhaps we are seeing more if it today than in the past because we see such an abundance of commercial grade material offered "en mass" by vendors who are just selling price point.
No cause for panic....just due diligence when buying. Use your loupe before the purchase, not just after.
In his latest newsletter (I quote; words highlighted by me in red):
Quote:
"Given the overwhelming evidence that presents itself in a repeatable and predictable manner, we believe that tourmalines are being artificially color enhanced by some type of color infusion process that follows the general path of the process seen in Tibet andesine. We further believe that there is a significant amount of color infused tourmaline on the market that is not being properly disclosed. The main sources for the specimens we have found and confirmed are dealers from Thailand and China. The methods being used go beyond the ancient art of simply dying of minerals and goes into a level that allows for transparent gemstones to be artificially color enhanced by methods that make identification quite difficult. Clearly, just as was the case with Tibet andesine, we were only able to identify specific specimens as candidates bas ed on the poor quality of treatment result that presented in the specimens. Specimens that are of high quality treatment would be extremely difficult to identify without advanced testing such as LA-ICP-MS or XRF."
I have my opinion about this person (notably coloured by the explanations from AvA), I just find it sad. Believe? Not really. It would be very nice getting hold of his "overwelming evidence"...
If I was Ted then I would be more than annoyed then... and has he dropped the dyefusion thing and now only use color infusion?
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:42 pm Posts: 2846 Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Ted's recent lectures, and I've been to two of them personally, say nothing about "colour infusion". He has spoken about using lithium in experiments. From what I gathered, it was unclear as to whether or not the effect (if any) was due to the presence of lithium rather than what would happen if you simply heat treated the same stones. Ted obviously loves what he does and has a curious mind, something that I admire. But at the same time, he's not very precise with his terminology, which can be confusing if you don't ask the right questions afterwards. One such example was his claim of "turning Hessonite into Spessartite". When asked directly if that meant that he had managed to actually change the properties of the stone, the answer was "No". He was talking only about the colour. Not being a gemologist, he doesn't seem to use the terms in the same way that we understand them. That's ok if you keep that in mind and think to clarify what he's saying later on with him.
Unfortunately, neither of the talks that I attended allowed for viewing the actual stones in any useful manner. Another problem for judging how effective his experiments were was that the stone pictures he was showing of before and after weren't actually showing the same stone. I'd love to see a stone cut in half, before and after, it would make it much easier to get a clearer picture of any effects his experiments may have had.
As for the annual pre-Tucson scare newsletters, it's sad. I think it's clear that the people who attend his Tucson outings are looking for a way to be part of the gem trade, somewhere we've all been. Anyone with a set of the PhotoAtlas books can find the exact same inclusions in the same stones, along with the identification of what they are and always have been and it's got nothing to do with treatments, the Chinese or the Thais. From where I'm sitting, the only reason I can think of for scaring the very people you are supposed to be "mentoring" through the show into NOT being confident to buy stones is to make them dependant. Maybe someone else here has a better theory.
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