These Victoria Stone earrings turned out fabulous. Victoria stone is one of my favorite stones to cut. These earrings look like “Clouds & Sky” and wear beautifully. This stones are manmade and is a collector’s stone. I’ve listed the story of Victoria below. These stones are hand cut by me and then I set them in Argentium sterling silver with sterling silver earwires.

The Victoria stone, also called Iimori stone, is a man-made stone created by Dr. Imori from Japan. Late in the 60's Iimori Laboratory Ltd. of Tokyo Japan began to market a variety of imitation gem materials. The chatoyant Victoria stone in 16 different colors. This material was advertised to be a melt of various natural minerals that had reconstructed into a new mineral and cooled for months under 2000 pounds pressure. The melt mass then partially devitrified forming chatoyant fan-like sprays of crystal fibers. To protect his market, the 84-year-old Dr. Iimori did not patent his process, instead preferring to keep it a secret. With no new production since the 80s, it is now a collector’s stone.

Argentium® Sterling Silver is a patented and trademarked alloy that is at least 92.5% pure silver, just like traditional sterling silver. What makes it different from traditional sterling silver is that a small amount of germanium replaces some of the copper that is usually the other 7.5% of sterling silver. Peter Johns, a professor of silversmithing at Middlesex University in England, invented Argentium® Sterling Silver in 1996.

Argentium® Sterling Silver is highly tarnish-resistant and does not firescale.