The promise of the new
Every generation has believed that its discoveries marked a new beginning. From the first glitter of paste glass in the eighteenth century to the arrival of plastics in the early twentieth, the world of jewellery has greeted each novelty as a revolution. Each innovation brought its own promise, its own excitement, and its share of exaggeration. What is considered as progress is always seen through the lens of its time. For one age progress meant perfection or affordability, for another the imitation of nature, and for ours it means being green, sustainable or ethically pure. Over the ages the pattern repeats, repackaged in fresh rhetoric, and is judged more calmly once time has cooled its shine.
The illusion of rarity
Time has a way of softening what once looked extraordinary. In the urgency of the moment, every novelty seems rare, precious and new. Only with distance in time are we able to see it for what it truly was, and wonder how it ever seemed so exceptional. What today is praised as innovation may one day be remembered as simply common material with a passing halo of wonder.
The allure of modern miracles
In our own time, the synthetic diamond has become the latest emblem of progress.
In 2017, Adin had already reached this conclusion. De Beers made the shift impossible to ignore when it announced Lightbox on 29 May 2018, selling lab grown diamonds in white, pink and blue at a flat consumer price of US$800 per carat, a level that, for many in the trade, was sharply below prevailing business to business pricing at the time. In May 2025, De Beers announced its intention to close Lightbox, pointing to the sharp collapse in lab grown values and intensifying competition, while refocusing on natural diamonds for jewellery and industrial applications for synthetic diamonds.
The term lab grown, often used in marketing to soften the industrial reality of factory production gives the product a veneer of high tech refinement, and adds a touch of glamour to what are in fact ordinary factories, making the factory line sound like a laboratory, and the stone sound like a superior, purified achievement rather than a standardised product. Created through technology that recreates the pressures of the earth, these stones mirror nature’s masterpiece with almost perfect precision.
Yet the story that surrounds synthetic diamonds is written in words that deserve a closer look. Terms such as sustainable, green and ethical are used with great confidence, though the energy these production processes demand and the scale on which they are carried out, are not always mentioned. Marketing can paint them as the moral opposite of natural diamonds mined from the ground, but reality, as history reminds us, is rarely so clear.
The difference between a natural and a synthetic diamond is like the difference between a genuine smile and a rehearsed one; both can dazzle, but only one comes from within.
In time, synthetic diamonds will likely follow the same path as synthetic rubies once did, from being sold by the carat as something rare and marvellous to being weighed by the kilo at a fraction of the price. As more producers enter the market to take their share, competition will drive prices down, a process already well underway.
The wish to possess something that seems both beautiful and virtuous is an ancient one; only the language changes.
Aluminium as a mirror of its age
Aluminium tells us how quickly the meaning of a material can change. In the 1850s, it was rarer and more costly than gold, displayed as a wonder of modern science at great international exhibitions including the Paris Exhibition of 1855, where an aluminium bar was shown alongside the Crown Jewels, and shaped into jewels for the fashionable elite. Legend has it that Napoleon III served honoured guests from aluminium plates, though written proof remains elusive. When industrial electrolysis made mass production possible after 1886, the price fell and aluminium became common. A century later, in the 1960s and 1970s, avant garde jewellers took it up again, not for its value but for its message, declaring that beauty no longer depended on preciousness. What had once been a treasure for emperors had become a material for ideas, proof that value, like fashion, is never fixed but always borrowed from its time.
The flame of imitation: Verneuil rubies
Another chapter in the long story of innovation and illusion, takes place at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Auguste Verneuil perfected his method for creating synthetic rubies through flame fusion. It was a small theatre of science, powdered alumina falling through a column of fire and crystallising into brilliant red corundum before astonished eyes. These so-called new rubies were greeted as miracles of modern chemistry and at first sold as wonders of progress, yet they soon blurred the border between authenticity and artifice. What had begun as a triumph of ingenuity revealed how quickly admiration can turn to confusion once imitation reaches perfection. If Verneuil’s invention had appeared today, it would very likely be praised as an ethical or sustainable alternative to nature itself, proof that every age rewrites the language of virtue while keeping the same desire to romanticise novelty.
Innovation, repetition, and desire
Our fascination with new materials tells us as much about ourselves as it does about the objects we create. Innovation in jewellery has never been only technical. It is also emotional and psychological. It mirrors our recurring hope that progress might make beauty more attainable, and that it might also quiet the moral unease that has so often shadowed luxury, and it flatters another constant ambition: to buy the look of splendour for a fraction of its price. Yet history often tempers this hope. The eighteenth century saw glass imitating diamonds with astonishing skill. The nineteenth century proclaimed aluminium the metal of the future. The twentieth century celebrated bakelite, lucite and other early plastics as symbols of modernity. Each in its turn promised to replace the old, and each eventually became a relic of its own time. Novelty, like fashion, shines briefly and then forgets itself.
Truth and transparency
True progress does not lie in calling something new, but in describing it truthfully. There is no shame in invention and no virtue in tradition for its own sake. What matters is integrity, the courage to see materials as they are, and to speak of them without disguise.
A synthetic diamond may be admired for its precision and craft, just as a natural one may be revered for the miracle of its making deep within the earth. Both can be valued when presented without illusion, though their worth is not the same. What weakens consumers’ trust is not change itself, but sales language that invites them to believe that novelty equals virtue. It may help a sale today, but it erodes the wider confidence that clients should be able to place in jewellery professionals. For jewellers, this is the long view: describe materials precisely and refuse inflated promises.
At Adin, we have come to trust time as the most reliable judge of truth in jewellery. Materials, techniques and fashions continue to change, yet sincerity endures, and time has a quiet way of showing which promises were empty. It is never easy to be the child who says the emperor has no clothes, yet honesty has always been the beginning of understanding. Every age invents its own language of virtue, and every generation must learn to tell innovation from illusion. Our task is not to oppose progress, but to remember that authenticity has never needed persuasion to be real.
Purpose of This Page
This page offers a conceptual overview of innovation and illusion in jewellery materials within the context of jewellery history and design. It is written from within the jewellery discipline and focuses on what helps the reader see, compare, and interpret jewels, rather than aiming to be a full encyclopaedia. This page forms part of the lecture series “A Journey Through the World of Jewellery” and points towards deeper study through Adin’s jewellery glossary, specialised library, and style overview timeline. Use and sharing for educational purposes are welcomed. If you reference or quote this page, please mention Adin as your source.
Accuracy Note
Every effort has been made to present this information accurately and in line with current historical understanding. Interpretations may evolve as new research becomes available, and readers who notice points for refinement are welcome to share their insights.
Author Attribution
Elkan Wijnberg, Jewellery Historian and Antique Jewellery Specialist – Adin – www.antiquejewel.com