It has from very early times also been regarded as a form of personal adornment. In addition, there is the less costly costume jewellery, made from lower value materials and mass-produced. In some cases people were buried with their jewellery. Other variations include wire sculpture (wrap) jewellery, using anything from base metal wire with rock tumbled stone to precious metals and precious gemstones.

Theoretically a perfect diamond crystal could be composed of one giant molecule of carbon. After the magma cooled, it solidified into kimberlite, where the precious rough diamond is still found today. It is the strength and regularity of this bonding which makes diamond very hard, non-volatile and resistant to chemical attack.

Nowadays such a distinction is no longer made by the trade. Rare or unusual gemstones, generally meant to include those gemstones which occur so infrequently in gem quality that they are scarcely known except to connoisseurs, include andalusite, cassiterite and bixbite. Some minerals can be very beautiful, but they may be too soft and will scratch easily (such as the mineral fluorite). Fluorite is extremely colorful and pretty but has a hardness of only 4 on the hardness scale and has four perfect cleavage directions, which makes it only an oddity as a cut gem.

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