Panjikar Gem Research and Tech Institute, Pune, organized a three day intensive Advanced Course for Jeweller-Gemmologists. Jewellers from Coimbatore, Pondicherry, and Chennai attended marathon sessions for 3days with Dr. Jayshree Panjikar as the Chief Coordinator. The jewellers who had learnt gemology many years ago required a reorientation and the state-of-the-art knowledge about the recent developments in treatments, synthetics and modern methods to identify them. The prime requirement for admission was that participants should have knowledge of gemmology and have to deal daily in gemstones. Although sophisticated instruments can detect all the treatments the course was especially organized for the jewellers who have limited access to high tech instruments. Stress was laid on how to identify the natural, treated, synthetic and the synthetic treated rubies, yellow and blue sapphires, emeralds with a mere 10x lens.

In the recent years the colored stone market is flooded with treated material especially beryllium treated ruby, glass filled ruby, blue sapphires with diffusion treatment, emeralds with glass filling, coated gemstones, doublets and treated synthetics. Added to this the participants got first hand information about diamonds of different types of diamond like Type Ia, IIa etc. and the latest developments in synthetic diamonds produced by HPHT and CVD and tips for their identification.

The last day session also had a seminar on the Organic Gems which included Pearls (Akoya, Keshi, South Sea, Tahitian and freshwater pearls), Amber, Coral, Ivory and Jet. This seminar was followed by PANGEMTECH’s special Convocation with Vice Chancellor Prof. Dr. Pramod Talgeri as the Chief Guest. Many outstation students from Bangalore, Aurangabad, Amravati, Udupi, received their Professional Gemologist Diploma.

Dr. Pramod Talgeri congratulated the successful students and was happy to see that Dr. Panjikar’s old students had come all the way from South India to upgrade their knowledge after almost 25 years or more.