They say that my grandfather was a genius. In 1925, at the age of nineteen, he figured out aerodynamics well enough to design and build an airplane – a low-wing monoplane in an era of biplanes – that actually flew. He was a gifted artist: a plate of his incredibly detailed color drawings of butterflies still adorns my mother’s living room wall. Armed with only a high school education my grandfather spent his working life as an engineer, first with aircraft, naturally, then many years designing combines. He designed the first Gleaner self-propelled combine, bringing the company from the age of horse- and mule-drawn implements into the modern age. A six-inch replica of that combine, built by Grandpa from tin cans, sits in my uncle’s living room.
After retiring my grandfather took up a new hobby: faceting gems. He studied how light acts and reacts, how it reflects and refracts, and the entirely complex world of gem minerals and what types of cuts and facet angles each required. He bought faceting equipment and made a small business out of a very exacting hobby. All family members have jewelry given as gifts.
Following Grandpa’s death, my father took the faceting equipment into his own home, taught himself to facet, and carried on the hobby. Understand, Dad was also an aircraft engineer, a quiet, intelligent, and exceptionally kind man, and the exacting nature of faceting was an easy extension of his life’s work. Alas, his eyesight declined in later years and he became increasingly unable to do faceting as finely as he expected. Dad died a year and a half ago.
Last weekend I, the oldest son in the family, picked up the faceting equipment that Grandpa and Dad had accumulated and brought it to my home. To buy equipment for the hobby outright would cost more than I can afford, and I have the double sense of gratitude for inheriting it and the sober responsibility to facet gems as well as the excellent men preceding me. Although artistic, I’m not an engineer. It will take effort to equal their quality.
On the faceting machine there remains a gem started by Dad. I don’t know what type of stone it is; its very pale green may be corundum, which would make it a sapphire, yet it is exceptionally clear and large. The finished stone would be more than a carat. I don’t know of any synthetic stone that would imitate such a pale sapphire – its shade makes it worth less than darker and bluer stones – and I am left wondering. Dad only got the crown faceted, the top portion of the stone, and hadn’t even shaped the pavilion underneath. He may not have been able to see well enough to know that the crown wasn’t polished well enough, and there are still lap streaks on it.
It would be nearly impossible to finish the stone as it was started. I don’t know the facet angles that were used and can’t accurately polish them as they need to be. I’m not sure how to align the girdle facets – the thin strip of surfaces around the girth of the stone that separates the crown from the pavilion – to match the crown. Probably I’ll have to regrind the stone and start over. It will lose carat weight if I do that. But it’s not a complete stone otherwise, and to save it as is serves no purpose other than to occupy one of the dop sticks I’d need to facet other gems.
So I’ve inherited some equipment and several hundred rough stones. There was something else also given me: the attitude to use it well. There is no doubt in my mind that I can figure it out and make some very nice stones. There is an artistic determination and appreciation in me, and the desire to do things well. There is also a desire to make fine things as gifts for others (every family member already has one of my hand-crafted, built from scratch, antique reproduction clocks). There’s little use in arguing whether such things were with me from birth or taught during my upbringing; it’s likely both. But it’s the way things have always been done in my family and I am the next generation to use it in the world, with the responsibility to pass it on.
Every facet on a gem is important. Leave one unpolished and there is diminishment. Facets at sloppy angles leave a gem less brilliant than it could be. I was raised with good morals, good language, the pursuit of knowledge, the expectation to treat others well, the discipline to do things well, the ability to think critically, and on and on. There are many facets to a human life.
My life is a gem, carefully shaped and polished by artistic souls and hands. It is my fortune that they did a fine job.
