GGTL Laboratories Switzerland

GGTL Laboratories Switzerland The mission of the GGTL laboratories is to analyse gemstones and provide reports for diamonds, colou

A gold and quartz pendant, set with one cabochon, four beads and three sapphire pendeloques. Made around 1920, attribute...
10/09/2026

A gold and quartz pendant, set with one cabochon, four beads and three sapphire pendeloques. Made around 1920, attributed to the house of Koch.

A jewel that did more than survive a century: it was given by a queen to a baroness, in recognition of her work in Red Cross hospitals during the First World War.

It was entrusted to us for analysis. And under the microscope, one of these sapphires... just one... took us somewhere we did not expect. Far enough that what we found in it has, to our knowledge, never been described before in a sapphire.

Over the coming week, we are opening the file for you. Together we will examine this gem and its inclusions.

We will take you inside this jewel. Stay with us!

Micrograph of the week:Artificially healed fissures in a quench-cracked synthetic ruby (flame fusion)Want to see more mi...
06/09/2026

Micrograph of the week:

Artificially healed fissures in a quench-cracked synthetic ruby (flame fusion)

Want to see more micrograph?
http://www.ggtl-lab.org/

Some inclusions just sit there. Others tell stories.Deep inside certain sapphires from Kashmir hides a tiny crystal of u...
27/08/2026

Some inclusions just sit there. Others tell stories.

Deep inside certain sapphires from Kashmir hides a tiny crystal of uranothorianite — a naturally radioactive mineral, trapped since the corundum itself was forming.

The result: a radio-induced photoluminescence halo. Invisible under ordinary light, it reveals its green glow only under UV.

Discover more about our laboratory
👉 www.ggtl-lab.org

💎 Micrograph of the week 💎Octahedral luminescent structures in a melee-size (8/8) diamond, captured with our DFI©, part ...
22/08/2026

💎 Micrograph of the week 💎

Octahedral luminescent structures in a melee-size (8/8) diamond, captured with our DFI©, part of our ongoing hunt for synthetics in a parcel. These clean, regular geometries tell the story of crystal growth at a microscopic scale — and that's exactly the kind of detail our instruments are built to reveal.

Since this image was taken, the DFI has evolved considerably. Today in Geneva, we work with the DFI© V3R, the latest generation of our system — faster, more powerful and precise, and developed to meet the ever-rising demands of sorting synthetic diamonds, regardless of size.

Want to know more about our instruments?
👉 https://ggtl-lab.org/en/Discover-our-instruments

Micrograph of the week: this phlogopite (mica) inclusion caught our eye in an emerald from Zambia, glowing under darkfie...
07/08/2026

Micrograph of the week: this phlogopite (mica) inclusion caught our eye in an emerald from Zambia, glowing under darkfield illumination — surrounded by a scatter of two-phase (liquid-gas) inclusions.



Want to see more micrographs like this? Visit us at https://www.ggtl-lab.org/

The world is vast, gems are small. That was the opening line, almost a motto, of Franck Notari and Féodor Blumentritt's ...
21/07/2026

The world is vast, gems are small.

That was the opening line, almost a motto, of Franck Notari and Féodor Blumentritt's talk at the recent gemology gathering in Poil, devoted to one of the trickiest subjects in the trade: determining the geographic origin of coloured gemstones, illustrated through the emblematic case of Kashmir sapphire.

Thank you to our hosts for having us!

Qu'est-ce que La Gemmologie à Poil ?
Depuis 1998, une vingtaine de gemmologues francophones s'y retrouvent chaque été, dans un cadre aussi simple que chaleureux, pour échanger sur leurs travaux. Tout est né de trois amis ayant des racines dans le village de Poil, dans la Nièvre, et de leur envie de faire vivre la gemmologie autrement qu'entre les murs d'un laboratoire.

Micrograph of the week: Ruby from Mogok, Myanmar. Under magnification, we can see needle-like black rutile and pyrite cr...
17/07/2026

Micrograph of the week: Ruby from Mogok, Myanmar.

Under magnification, we can see needle-like black rutile and pyrite crystals, trapped inside the stone the moment it was forming.

An inclusion is never just a mineral accident; it's also a clue, a trace of the place and conditions in which the crystal grew.

Under the microscope, this "honeycomb ruby" reveals itself !Tightly packed grains, open cavities, and inside them... sma...
01/07/2026

Under the microscope, this "honeycomb ruby" reveals itself !

Tightly packed grains, open cavities, and inside them... small prismatic crystals with near-perfect faces.

A morphology instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with Ramaura synthetic rubies.

Want to know more about it ?

Read the full article here in a R***e Gemmes from Gemmologie & Francophonie : https://lnkd.in/eXCMqUHx (french only)⁠
⁠
Blumentritt, F., Notari, F., Caplan, C. (2024) Rubis synthétique poreux, Gemmes, Association Gemmologie & Francophonie. N°4, pp 77-79.

📸: F. Blumentritt — GGTL Laboratories Switzerland

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