Many generations and some 170 years of company history lie dormant in the basement at Constantin Wild’s – in the form of raw gemstones from all parts of the world.

Roughly carpentered crates with handwritten labels, many of which have yellowed with age, are stored in the room which – like the house in the style of the founders – is over 100 years old. Enormous chunks whose outer surface is ochre peer out of a wooden box bearing the inscription ‘Chile-Lapis’. A few feet further over, the radiant pink of massive rose quartzes. The label on another box of stones says ‘Agates for showcase large 1930’. Other boxes are labelled ‘Aventurine’, ‘Jasper various’ or ‘Rhodonite’, and some of them, indeed, are still bound by the metal straps in which they were shipped. No question about it: Constantin’s cellar has a nostalgic charm to it – though it is not a purely ‘historical’ warehouse.

“We offer some raw stones to regional cutting shops, whilst others go through our own in-house facility,” explains Constantin Wild, who comes from a gemstone family and now runs the company in the fourth generation. In many instances, he selects the raw stones and does the preliminary shaping himself. He demonstrates the first steps of further processing on an amethyst druse. While doing so, he explains that the amethyst is currently experiencing a kind of a revival. So it’s obvious that at Intergem, alongside other specialities such as paraiba tourmalines and sapphires in purple, there will also be some fine specimens of amethyst to be seen.
Story by: Saraj Morath