Well, in my profession, there was a man who stood out above all others…Richard T. Liddicoat. I was lucky enough to go to school at GIA in the late 1970’s when Liddicoat was still working as the top dog at GIA, the Gemological Institute of America.
It was rumored that this guy could hold a gem in his hand tell you how much it weighed , what it was, what region of the world it was found, and could pinpoint the mine it came out of.
Now it seems to me that he wasn’t very accessible, he seemed very aloof.
My stay at the Institute would be 6 months, consisting of 8 hour class days, 5 days a week. I figured out that for class time, it was the equivalent of about 3 ½ years of college time. That is what they call “crash” or “speed” learning…believe me, it works!
The reasoning behind this method of learning is that a jeweler in mid-America could afford to send an employee or son or daughter for 6 months to learn the new latest and greatest to better the industry, opposed to committing to 4 years of college.
Now, back to my original story. We had assignments each day that had to be completed for the following day. They generally consisted of 10 questions. One had to achieve a 70% average to pass. In doing one assignment, an interesting question came up. It read “Do you know of anyone in the jewelry industry who has been sued?”
In my mind, I was thinking “I don’t even know the proper way to pick up a diamond with tweezers, much less know anyone involved in a jewelry lawsuit.”
So, I made up an answer!
Seems there was a jeweler once who left his office and was supposed to deliver a large diamond ring to a woman at her house. On his way, he ran into an old girlfriend who asked him to go dancing. Well, the jeweler had a false (hollow) heel in his shoe, so he put the diamond ring there for safekeeping. After dancing the night away, he had worn his heel down and caused the diamond to fracture and crack. When finally delivering the ring to the owner, she screamed and said “You’ve ruined my ring!”. She sued the jeweler, who lost his business, and now is a professional dancer!
