Long associated with luxury goods similar to fine crystal glass miniatures and chandeliers, Austrian manufacturer Swarovski has over a century of knowledge that offers them an unbeatable competitive advantage when it comes to such goods as rhinestone diamond simulants.
Created from rock crystal, glass, or even acrylic, the most faithful examples almost rival the expense of real diamonds sometimes!
That’s because fine Swarovski rhinestones can generate rainbow effects just like the real thing.
Thanks to special coatings and production processes, many will even sparkle in the sunlight or exhibit some other qualities of a genuine diamond.
But for all the verisimilitude, just about the most tell-tale qualities involve its inherent softness, given a rhinestone by the lead in its composition, making edges and even facets rather easily scratched and swiftly rounded.
Such tell-tale signs require but fairly modest magnification to spot.
Modern manufacturing methods also can give things away, such as the molds used in lieu of traditional cutting, making for rather obvious seams.
It’s all done in Wattens, Austra, where the company even operates a small indoor theme park at a local shoppping mall.
Near historic Innsbruck in the scenic southern Tyrol region of alpine valleys, Swarovski quality is so well-known that every year since 2004 the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York City has been graced by a star from the company, quality that could have made its eponymous founder, Daniel, proud.
He was born more than a hundred years ago in 1862 to a glass-cutter who also held a small glass factory of his own, and was from a young age quite skilled at the craft himself, even being able to carry on to patent his own electric cutting machine at the age of thirty, a device that significantly facilitated the mass production of lead crystal glass jewelry.
