Construction or treatment status

What this axis answers

Construction or treatment status asks how the object in hand came to be, and what has been done to it since. One block of values keeps a natural substance and grades how much is known about the work on it: treatment status unknown, common industry optimization, treatment common enough that goods have to be told apart by report, and dyed. A second block covers what was made rather than found — a synthetic product that has a naturally occurring counterpart, man-made glass, and a manufactured material for which no such counterpart is known. A third covers goods put together out of parts, whether assembled or composite, or pressed and reconstructed from fragments. Cultured formation stands by itself, with later work recorded on a separate line. The values left over hold the substance open: an imitation, whose real material has to be stated, and a term whose actual material is still to be verified. The axis carries one boundary: a status must never obscure the natural substance or the actual material identity.

How it differs from the other four axes

The other axes name the thing; this one records its condition. Origin class asks whether the material occurs in nature, was manufactured, or is not settled at all; material domain sorts inorganic from organic; identity level places a name between mineral species and trade name; mineral chemical class covers composition. None of them records how the goods were built, or what was done to them afterwards. A cultured pearl is a natural, organic, biogenic material on those axes, and only here is its formation recorded as cultured. Fei Cui reads there as natural material and as a rock and mineral aggregate, while the finding that treatment is common enough to need a report belongs to this axis alone.

Two common misreadings

Pressed amber does not join natural amber: it is an artificial product, fused out of ground amber into a single coherent piece, and the CIBJO Gemstone Book, 2022 edition, defines that class at clause 5.67 as pressed materials. GB/T 16552-2017 clause 5.1.3.4 requires the base name of the natural material to be prefixed with the word for "reconstructed", and reconstructed amber is one of the two examples the standard itself gives. Cubic zirconia, at the other end, is not the synthetic of anything: no natural gem counterpart is in routine use, so it belongs with the manufactured materials rather than the synthetic ones, and calling it synthetic zircon points at an unrelated mineral species.

What it means for disclosure

Which value applies decides what the listing may say. On the man-made side, 16 CFR 23.25(b) allows a gem name for a laboratory-grown, synthetic, imitation or simulated stone only where one of the qualifiers named in that paragraph immediately precedes it with equal conspicuousness, and 23.27 bars real, genuine and natural for anything produced artificially; CIBJO Gemstone Book 2022 clause 4.3.4.1 asks that an artificially crystallised product that has no known natural counterpart be shown together with the term artificial product or artificial stone, in characters of the same size and colour. On the natural side, disclosure of the work done is owed under 23.24 on any one of three triggers: the treatment is not permanent, it creates special care requirements, or it has a significant effect on value. Where the work cannot be established at all, GB/T 16552-2017 clause 5.4.2.2 b) lets the name stay silent but requires the quality document to record that the goods may have been treated, or that this could not be determined.

Controlled values on this axis

CIBJO definitions

Pressed materials

artificial products (5.3) manufactured by fusing or bonding ground pieces of natural stones to form a coherent whole.

CIBJO Blue Book — Official Gemstone Book (Coloured Stone Commission 2022) (CIBJO): §5.67, p.27

Reconstructed stones

a previously used misleading term that should not be used. See pressed materials (5.67).

CIBJO Blue Book — Official Gemstone Book (Coloured Stone Commission 2022) (CIBJO): §5.69, p.27

Treatment

a practice that artificially changes the appearance and/or the durability of a gemstone or gem material by applying heating, diffusion, irradiation, filling, coating or other artificial processes.

CIBJO Blue Book — Official Gemstone Book (Coloured Stone Commission 2022) (CIBJO): §5.83, p.28

Where treatment begins

Normal lapidary practices

methods used to fashion gemstones and artificial products which include cutting (5.23), sawing, grinding, faceting, polishing (5.64), carving, engraving and drilling.

CIBJO Blue Book — Official Gemstone Book (Coloured Stone Commission 2022) (CIBJO): §5.54, p.25

methods used to fashion gemstones and artificial products which include cutting (5.30), sawing, grinding, faceting, polishing, carving, engraving, drilling and cleaning (5.20).

CIBJO Blue Book — Coral Book (Coral Commission 2024) (CIBJO): §5.69, p.18

The books word this differently; each wording is given with its source.

Treated gemstones

Gemstones (3.1.1) that have been treated (3.1.2) by ways other than normal lapidary practices (5.54) to change their appearance and or durability.

CIBJO Blue Book — Official Gemstone Book (Coloured Stone Commission 2022) (CIBJO): §5.82, p.28

Unknown

a term used to indicate that a person is unaware if a gemstone has undergone a treatment.

CIBJO Blue Book — Official Gemstone Book (Coloured Stone Commission 2022) (CIBJO): §5.85, p.28

Normal procedures

natural and cultured pearls which have only been drilled (5.64), cut (5.58 and 5.59), faceted (5.67), carved (5.34), polished (5.168), buffed (5.31) and/or cleaned (5.42). NOTE - For drilled and cut pearls and cultured pearls see clauses 4.4.2.1 and 4.5.2.1.

CIBJO Blue Book — Pearl Book (Pearl Commission 2024-1) (CIBJO): §5.143, p.39

Treated pearls or treated cultured pearls

pearls or cultured pearls which have been altered by methods other than normal procedures (5.143) to change their colour, composition and/or appearance and / or durability that requires specific information.

CIBJO Blue Book — Pearl Book (Pearl Commission 2024-1) (CIBJO): §5.205, p.46

Treated coral

corals that have been treated to change their appearance and or durability. See clause 4.2.5.

CIBJO Blue Book — Coral Book (Coral Commission 2024) (CIBJO): §5.97, p.21

Qualifying words

Cultured

the term “cultured” is only applied to “cultured pearls” and no other material. The secretion of layers is caused by the metabolism of living molluscs. Cultured pearls are formations secreted in the interior of the productive molluscs. NOTE – See the CIBJO Pearl Book for additional information.

CIBJO Blue Book — Official Gemstone Book (Coloured Stone Commission 2022) (CIBJO): §5.21, p.22

Definitions are quoted verbatim from the cited CIBJO Blue Book; […] marks an excerpt, and the full definition is at the cited clause.