The three lights we judge a stone by

Stone is sold under one light. It is a white, even, expensive light, and it is designed to make everything on the tray look like the best example of itself. Nobody lives under that light. Our clients live under three, and so the tray goes through all three before a single bead is kept.

The first is morning. Grey, side-on, coming through a window that faces the wrong way. This is the honest light. It has no warmth to lend and no shadow to hide in. Under it, a tiger eye either has a band or it does not, an obsidian either has depth or it is simply black paint, and the wood shows every place where the grain was not quite straight. Most of what we reject, we reject here, before eleven in the morning.

The second is dusk. Low, warm, coming from the other side of the room. This is the flattering light and we use it on purpose, because it is the light in which a piece will most often be seen by someone else: across a table at the end of a long day, in the last hour before the lamps come on. A stone that goes dead at dusk goes dead in the room that matters. A stone that comes alive there, and was honest at nine in the morning, is starting to earn its place.

The third is the desk lamp. Close, hard, from above. This is where our clients actually spend their hours, and it is a cruel light: it finds every pit in a polish and every seam in a glued bead. It is also the only light in which silver-sheen obsidian does what it is named for, throwing a band of silver from inside the stone when the wrist turns under the lamp. We keep a lamp on the bench that is the same kind of lamp that sits on most desks, and the last thing we do with a bead before it goes into the tray is turn it under that.

Three lights, three questions. Is it honest. Does it come alive. Does it survive being looked at closely. A bead that answers yes to all three is rare. We buy stone in kilos and keep it in grams.

There is a fourth light, and we cannot test for it. It is the light of the room the piece will be worn into, which we have never seen. So the three lights are a proxy. They are the best guess we can make about a stranger's day: a grey start, a warm end, and a long middle under a lamp. If a bead has held up through all three, it will probably hold up through yours.

When you receive a piece, do this once. Take it to a window in the morning. Take it to a window at dusk. Turn it under your own desk lamp. You will see the three things we saw, and you will know why the other beads were sent back.