One of the foremost jewelry and watch exhibitions in the region took place in Prague Oct. 4–7. The Watches & Jewelry fair 2007 continued a 16-year tradition of showcasing the finest collections of jewelry and precious stones from around the world.

At the fair, CBW spoke to Václav Kolombo, the chairman of Granát, družstvo umělecké výroby, a jewelry making cooperative based in Turnov, North Bohemia. His company has a reputation for making high quality jewelry based on garnets. These semiprecious stones are usually found in red but come in a variety of colors and have been used to make jewelry since the Bronze Age. Czech garnet has been particularly highly prized through the centuries. One of its most famous admirers was Emperor Rudolf II, who ruled Bohemia in the late 16th century. His collection held many significant specimens.

Q: You have a long tradition of jewelry making, what are the most serious problems currently confronting your company?

A: We definitely have a strong jewelry making tradition here, and I am pleased about that. However, there are hundreds of copies of Czech garnet jewelry on the market coming from Turkey and Italy. The [counterfeiters] sponge on the name and tradition, producing the cheapest and worst imitations. Their prices, however, are only a little lower than for our original jewelry. These imitations contain a natural stone called almandine which has a similar chemistry to our stone, but it is definitely not a Czech garnet.

Q: Does the customer have any way of telling the difference between the original and imitation stones?

A: No. The customers will see no difference regarding both quality and price. But they are being cheated. The imitations are a good source of profit for the suppliers and sellers—no matter if they sell our original or the almandine-based product—their margin in each case ranges from 100 to 150 percent.

Q: That means there is still good demand for your jewelry. Do [the imitations] help your sales figures?

A: When you walk round the center of Prague, you can see about 20 shops labeled ‘granát’ (garnet), but just two of them sell the originals made by our cooperative—the products bearing the Český granát (Czech garnet) and Český granátový šperk (Czech garnet jewelry) trademarks. The rest are just copies, but we are able to compete. The years 2002 and 2003 were tough. Our sales were badly hit by the floods and also by the fact that there were many fewer U.S. customers arriving in Prague after the events of Sept. 11. But last year our sales were Kč 256 million (€ 9.28 million), and we expect even better figures this year.

Q: You have your own garnet mines, you employ your own gem cutters, jewelers and goldsmiths. What are the advantages of this total approach?

A: We are the exclusive owners of two mines. One produces 13 grams of garnet per ton [of extract] and the other mine has a recovery ratio of 30 grams of garnet per ton. That is about the maximum, even though the ratio was sometimes exaggerated in the past. There was an estimate back in the ’60s that amusingly declared a ratio of between 50 to 80 grams per ton. That is a complete fantasy and has nothing to do with reality. The fact that we employ our own jewelers is very favorable for such a challenging production environment. The workers who make garnet jewelry need to be highly skilled, experienced and also fast as they are paid by piece. The wages start at Kč 14,000 per month, but the best can make up to Kč 40,000 monthly. They also need to enjoy their job as making jewelry is tough if you have no passion for it. We have had people coming back to us who left the cooperative after its transformation in 1992 to set up their own jewelry making businesses but had no success. There are also young goldsmiths, gem cutters and jewelers from the integrated secondary school and the secondary school of arts and design in Turnov. Regarding the Watches & Jewelry 2007 fair, our goldsmiths were awarded first prize in the Jewel 2007 competition, which was part of the fair program, in the category of commerce and arts.