Idea 237 of 500. Cluster 12: The gem chain, from Ratnapura to the certificate
Jewellery design studios employing the young designers who now leave for Bangkok and Dubai
The mechanism, from the book
The sapphire is mined here and cut here, and its value is certified in Basel and turned into money in Geneva. Every step of that chain can be built at home, and the first one is the piece of paper.
Every idea in cluster 12 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Find 3 young jewellery designers who are planning to leave for Bangkok or Dubai and ask each to design one ring around a Ceylon sapphire. Have a local workshop make one, photograph it well, and show it to 5 Sri Lankan families abroad and 3 jewellers. The proof is a sold ring or a commission, and which design drew it.
- Who pays first
- A Sri Lankan buyer abroad who wants a ring designed and made on the island with a Ceylon stone, rather than a foreign setting of an island gem.
- What leaves today
- Designers trained here leave for Bangkok and Dubai, so the design, the setting and the retail price of Ceylon stones are all added abroad.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
In the book
- Ch. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
The sapphires in the island's inventory - Ch. SixteenThe Bridge
Basel, Geneva and the Swiss gem bridge
More from cluster 12
- 236A gem laboratory in Colombo to the standard of the Swiss ones, with a foreign partner if it must, so the origin report is issued where the stone was mined
- 238A Ratnapura mine visit sold as a day, with a licensed dealer and a laboratory report on anything you buy
- 239Gem-cutting apprenticeships, paid, with the graduates employed by the studios above
- 240A Ceylon sapphire brand for engagement rings, sold online to Sri Lankans abroad and beyond, with the stone's story traced from pit to finger
- 241Auction days in Colombo for the trade, with international buyers flown in, the way Geneva does it twice a year
- 242Moonstone from Meetiyagoda as a named origin, since nobody else has it
Idea 237 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.