Day 13-Gem Excess

As I've posted before, I'm currently in Tucson for the annual gem and jewelry shows. And I have to say I'm exhausted. I walked miles today just from tent to tent. And that was just two shows. There are over 40 going on all over town. I have seen entirely too many beads, rocks, slabs, precious gems, and sterling. It's all starting to run together.

The sheer volume of merchandise changing hands in Tucson this month is staggering. For something generally small and weighed in carats, the rocks here likely add up to several thousand tons. And there are even more beads--millions of beads in every size, shape and color, glass, silver, stone, porcelain. It's truly mind-boggling. And the finished jewelry--who knew there was so much of it in the world? To wander the aisles of these shows, you certainly wouldn't think there were any financial problems anywhere in the world, and certainly no poverty or hunger.

So today's book is meant to comment on that extreme excess. It's a stab bound book with a cover cut from a tote bag one of the companies was handing out today. It's like a woven papery cloth. The pages of the book are all full-color adds cut from the pages of the shows' guidebook. Dozens of pages of color pictures of beads, stones and jewelry. The binding is done with copper wire, the kind wire-wrap jewelry artists often use. After threading it through the holes punched in the pages and cover, I twisted it closed and coiled the ends up like a wire-wrap jewelry piece. Flipping through the dozens of pages of ads is an amazing look through the world of contemporary gems and jewelry.