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Turquoise is the stone people most often buy without knowing what they bought. Two bracelets can sit side by side in a window, the same blue and the same size, and one is mined stone worth several hundred dollars while the other is dyed white rock that never contained a speck of turquoise. December's birthstone has more treated and imitation material in circulation than almost anything else we handle. Here is how to tell the categories apart and how to care for the real thing. Everything starts with porosity Turquoise forms when copper-rich groundwater seeps down through rock and reacts...

Most people photograph their jewellery once, badly, on a kitchen counter, and then discover after a break-in that the picture shows a gold blur on a wood grain background. It proves almost nothing. The useful version takes an afternoon, needs a phone and a window, and produces a record that an insurance adjuster or a family lawyer can work from. Here is how we would do it. What an insurer is trying to establish Policies differ, so treat this as the common pattern and confirm the exact requirements with your own insurer. Broadly, a claim rests on three questions. Did...

Carat is a weight. It is measured on a scale, in milligrams, and it says nothing direct about how wide a diamond looks on a hand. This trips up almost every person who walks into our shop with a number in their head. They ask for a one carat diamond, and what they actually want is a stone that looks a certain size across the finger. Those are two different questions, and the second one is answered in millimetres. Here is the chart we wish more people saw before they started shopping, along with the reason the same carat weight...

People come to us from New Westminster for one of four reasons: something broke, something needs a written value, something inherited needs rethinking, or somebody is about to propose. This guide covers all four, with the honest version of how long each takes and what to bring. We are at 2929 Barnet Highway in Coquitlam, and New Westminster is an easy run for us to serve. Why New Westminster brings us so much inherited jewellery This is the practical reason we wrote a New Westminster guide with estate work at the centre of it rather than a generic repair page....

Most men own more jewellery than they wear. The drawer holds a chain from a birthday, cufflinks from a wedding, a bracelet that felt right in the shop. What actually goes on every morning is a watch, a wedding band, and maybe one other thing. This guide is about that gap. It covers the pieces that survive daily wear, how to size them for a real body, and the one metal question that matters more than looks. Start with one piece and wear it for a season The advice we give at the counter, to first-time buyers and to gift...

Three settings hold rows of small stones, and they look similar in a photograph and behave nothing alike on a hand. Pave, channel and bar setting differ in how much light reaches the stones, how much protection the stones get, how easy the ring is to clean, and whether it can ever be resized. Here is what each one does, and how to pick the one that suits how you actually live. What "melee" means, and why it matters here The small stones in all three settings are called melee, a trade word for diamonds and coloured stones under about...