ABSTRACT
In The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith discusses precious metals and gemstones, remarking that: 'their principal merit ... arises from their beauty, which renders them peculiarly fit for ornaments of dress and furniture...'.1 Scarcity, and difficulty of procurement, enhances the beauty of objects whose very merit lies in the fact that 'they are of no use but as ornaments'. Furthermore, people recognise that these qualities of rarity and ornament require the dimension of display for their full realisation for, as Smith puts it, 'the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves'. In these passages and elsewhere, most particularly in Lectures on Justice ...,2 the beauty of gemstones is linked to exclusivity and parade, a word which by the 1770s had acquired connotations of appearance, illusion and emptiness. Simultaneously attention is drawn to the disjuncture between European value systems and those pertaining in countries where gemstones originate. Gemstones — and by implication jewellery — are thereby intrinsically understood to be part of a colonialist discourse.3
