Scotland Magazine section Scottish Gems

Time to get precious

Alistir Wood Tait talks about gemmology as if it’s the new rock’n’roll. Here he provides a guide to Scotland’s rarest stones

When the average High Street dealer mentions the setting of a precious stone he means how it is mounted on silver or gold. To Alistir, ‘setting’ is just as likely to refer to the precarious and windswept mountainside where he chipped it from the granite. Rare among jewellers, he has regularly waded...

By Alistir Wood Tait from Issue 17 published on 29/11/2004