Due to their being less expensive than diamonds, rhinestones are often called “cheap” even though the best examples would fetch almost as much as real diamonds, like those created by Swaroski in Wattens, Austria.
Swarovski Rhinestones are famous for exhibiting lots of the same characteristics as genuine diamonds, for example glistening sparkling results seen when displayed in sunlight.
This level of know-how is due to the company’s long history – well over a hundred years, in fact – of manufacturing fine luxury goods such as crystal miniatures and chandeliers.
Obviously, as with all diamond simulants, Swarovski Rhinestones can only be but so faithful in their verisimilitude.
Underneath but rather magnification a trained eye may observe such tell-tale signs as seams, which are a predictable result of modern production processes.
Even the highest quality specimens which are not created through molds can be given away by the softness of the lead used in their composition, making for easily scratched surfaces and quickly dulled edges.
Such are the unlucky realities that attend all rhinestones, no matter the maker.
Yet those by Swarovski are eagerly sought all the same.
Started by Daniel Swarovski who in 1892 at the age of thirty managed to get an electric cutting machine patented, a device that made lead crystal jewelry less difficult to make, the company’s expertise are so famous that since 2004 they have supplied the star atop Rockefeller Center’s Christmas Tree in New York City.
Mention Swarovski Rhinestones and one is more likely to think of the European aristocracy than the American musicians now widely associated with the material, celebrities such as Dolly Parton and Elvis Presley who have adopted it as a part of their very stage personae; they have popularized the rhinestone even as they appear to have cheapened its image as a fairly expensive substitute for diamond.