Since first using a process that was developed in Germany in the early 1990’s to create “reconstituted turquoise” bricks that could be shaped and faceted like natural stone, the industry has exploded with reconstituted stone options.
The term “reconstituted stone” came about because of a belief in “truth in materials and marketing” that exists in many parts of the jewelry industry. Many famous companies selling finished jewelry have incredibly high standards when it comes to what they claim they are selling in comparison to the makeup of the actual jewelry. This is why there are so many complications and nuances in the grading of expensive products like diamonds, and why many companies label their sapphire gems as “heat treated”. Moderately blue sapphire gets much darker when left in a kiln for a few days, but this, in fact, is NOT the natural color of the stone, so it should always be noted when being sold if that is the case.
On a less value-oriented level, there are many distinctions in the semi-precious stone jewelry components that are sold today. From natural semi-precious (which is cut and shaped from rough material only) to heat-treated semi-precious stone, to dyed semi-precious stone (this is usually heat treated with dye for several hours in a kiln to change the color of a stone permanently) to plated semi-precious stone (this is a surface coating only effecting the very outer surface of a material, such as plating or luster coating), to reconstituted stone.
Reconstituted stone is made from crushing up actual stone (like turquoise) into dust and then mixing it with a type of epoxy resin that dries to the hardness of real stone when baked in an oven, and which holds together all of the particles of the actual stone dust, making the finished product easy to make into whatever shapes one can cut and polish the reconstituted stone into.
For Turquoise this is especially important because it is naturally a very soft, or “chalky” stone, that breaks very easily. It is quite valuable in its natural form because very little turquoise is mined in the world that is hard enough to use in jewelry without it getting damaged with use, and most turquoise, even when used in its natural, mined, form, are imbued with resonated epoxy of some sort to make it stronger so that it can last for a long time and be worn without being damaged.
Now that the format of reconstituted stone and dyed stone has been perfected over the past 30 years or so, companies are crushing up all sorts of conglomerations of stone types and holding them together with dyed epoxies to make incredibly intricate and beautiful beads and jewelry creations. These are not “natural stone”, but they ARE made from Natural Stone, but they are held together with unnatural epoxy glue. They are beautiful and can be a lot of fun with different colors and lines of epoxy flowing through the designs, but anyone that calls them “natural stone” or even “dyed stone” are not telling the full truth. Halcraft Collection takes a lot of time and effort to tell the truth about the contents of all of our products, and we proudly list them in the product name in every case.
Click below for fun projects featuring our Reconstituted Stone Beads:
