The modern birthstone calendar was voted by American retail jewellers at Kansas City in August 1912 and amended in 1952, 2002 and 2016, with other, undocumented changes since. The custom it set down, a stone for each birth month, is centuries older.
A tradition that begins in a vote is still a tradition a century later. People have worn these stones, given them and inherited them for more than a hundred years, and the minutes do not undo any of that.
Nor did the vote come from nothing. A first-century historian suggested that the twelve stones of the high priest’s breastplate might stand for the twelve months. A book on gems printed in Paris in 1762 credited the Germans with inventing a set of month stones about two hundred years earlier, and described the rings set with them. The jewellers at Kansas City were rearranging an inheritance, as people before them had done, and the list they voted for has been rearranged several times since.
The record runs from the breastplate to spinel in 2016, and the trade press of 1912 and 1952 reported the two votes that shaped the modern list.
Before the jewellers
The oldest thread is the breastplate described in Exodus, twelve stones set in four rows on the vestment of the high priest. Josephus, writing in the first century, describes the stones as engraved with the names of the sons of Jacob, “in the order according to which they were born”. Later in the same book he reads the tabernacle and the priest’s clothing as a picture of the universe. The two sardonyxes on the shoulders, he says, declare the sun and the moon, and of the twelve stones he writes: “whether we understand by them the months, or whether we understand the like number of the signs of that circle which the Greeks call the Zodiac, we shall not be mistaken in their meaning.” He offered both readings and chose neither, and in neither passage does he match a particular stone to a particular month or sign.
How the twelve came to be worn is less clear. George Frederick Kunz, the American gem writer whose 1913 book has a chapter on birthstones, reported “some evidence in favor of the theory” that at first a person acquired all twelve stones and wore each in its month, when its virtue was thought to be at its fullest. The single stone for the month of one’s birth came later.
The one dated account Kunz cites for when the custom began is French. In a treatise on precious stones published in 1762, Pouget wrote that “about two hundred years ago the Germans invented, on the model of the twelve stones of the Ephod, a series of twelve stones corresponding to the twelve months of the year”, which puts the invention around the 1560s, though he called the arrangement itself “une pure imagination, inconnue aux anciens” (pure imagination, unknown to the ancients). Many people, he went on, “and above all women”, saw a mystery in it and wanted on their finger the stone of the month in which they were born, with the sign of that month engraved upon it. It is the birthstone ring, in the form it had then.
Kunz told it differently. He wrote that “it appears that this custom originated in Poland some time during the eighteenth century”, and a page later placed it “probably in Poland, as we have stated”. He gave no source for Poland, and the one dated source he cited on the question was Pouget, who names the Germans. Kunz was surer about what the custom meant to the people who kept it. The owner of a ring set with a natal stone, he wrote, has the sense of “possessing something more intimately associated with his or her personality than any other stone, however beautiful or costly it may be.”
Kansas City, August 1912
The body that made the modern list was the American National Retail Jewelers’ Association, which its successor, Jewelers of America, names as the organisation it grew out of. The occasion was its seventh annual convention, held at Kansas City, Missouri, from 6 to 9 August 1912. The Jewelers’ Circular and the Horological Review covered it in the issue of 14 August. Its summary of the week records that the delegates “adopted a standard list of birth-month stones for the jewelry trade”, in a sentence that also covers a proposed advertising law and a decision that the jeweller must take a minimum profit on all lines, and the paper itself counted the list among the three most important things the convention did.
The list was adopted in an executive session from which, the report says, the members of the trade press were excluded. Its account of that session gives the decision in one line, “The amended birthstone list was next adopted,” prints the list in two columns headed Accepted Stones and Additions, and names no one as proposing it.
The case for having a standard list had been made earlier in the week, in an address by John Abel titled “The History of Birth Stones.” Abel described the problem a Cincinnati jeweller had put to him: a customer asks one jeweller for the September stone and is told sapphire, asks another and is told something else, and “puts all jewelers down as frauds.” He reached for antiquity at length, citing Pliny the Elder, before proposing a use for it: “My idea is that this ancient sentimentalism may be tempered with the modern commercialism, if the public at large is made more familiar through judicious advertising, about the good luck attending the wearing of proper birth gems.” He set the prize at $15,000,000 a year from 80,000 jewellers selling $500 more each, figures that multiply out to $40,000,000. He also offered the breastplate of about eight inches square that Aaron carried, set with twelve gems, as “no doubt” the beginning of the belief in the power of gems.
The same address explains the second column. Abel credited the association’s president, Steele F. Roberts, with it: for five of the stones “which are not always acceptable to the opposite sex,” Roberts had made “five admirable suggestions for ‘alternate’ gems.” Five months, March, June, August, October and December, carry two stones on the 1912 sheet, which matches the five suggestions he describes.
The 1912 list beside today’s
Six of the twelve months read differently now.
| Month | Adopted in 1912 | On the American Gem Society’s current chart |
|---|---|---|
| January | Garnet | Garnet |
| February | Amethyst | Amethyst |
| March | Bloodstone, aquamarine as an addition | Aquamarine, bloodstone |
| April | Diamond | Diamond |
| May | Emerald | Emerald |
| June | Pearl, moonstone as an addition | Pearl, alexandrite, moonstone |
| July | Ruby | Ruby |
| August | Sardonyx, peridot as an addition | Peridot, sardonyx, spinel |
| September | Sapphire | Sapphire |
| October | Opal, tourmaline as an addition | Opal, tourmaline |
| November | Topaz | Topaz, citrine |
| December | Turquoise, lapis lazuli as an addition | Tanzanite, turquoise, zircon |
Several assignments were made or moved in that room. Ruby had been December’s stone on the list “habitually followed” before 1912, in Kunz’s phrase. The convention moved it to July, and turquoise went the other way, from July to December. Peridot was lifted out of September, where Kunz wrote a year later that it had always sat, and made August’s addition. Sapphire, which Kunz considered “properly the gem for April,” was made the stone for September.
What each amendment did
The revision of 1952 is the substantial one. It was sponsored by the Jewelry Industry Council, and the trade paper reported that its list embodied suggestions from retail jewellers, ring manufacturers and stone dealers “according to their knowledge of the public’s wishes”. The revision was approved by the retail jewellers’ association, the National Association of Credit Jewelers and the American Gem Society. Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone printed it in August 1952. The report gives the scope of the changes as two months, June and December. June gained alexandrite. December kept turquoise, lost lapis lazuli and gained zircon. The report gives the reason in one sentence, “The basic reason for changes in June and December arises from the fact that the old list did not provide a birthstone that appealed to men and boys for their own use for these months.”
Two later additions are documented. Tanzanite was added to December in 2002, a proposal that the trade press reported was backed by industry bodies including the American Gem Trade Association, the International Colored Stone Association and Jewelers of America. Spinel was added to August in June 2016, announced jointly by Jewelers of America and the American Gem Trade Association.
One change happened without explanation. The 1952 printing drops the two columns and gives every month a flat line, with the two-stone months set out in alphabetical order, so nothing on the page says which of March’s, August’s or October’s stones had been the addition in 1912, though the report itself still calls alexandrite June’s “approved addition”. The order on later charts carries no documented meaning either: March reads aquamarine and bloodstone, and August peridot and sardonyx, just as the alphabet would have them, and the American Gem Society now runs December alphabetically too.
Citrine, for November, has no printing behind it. It is on every current chart, but the list adopted in 1912 gives November topaz alone, and so does the whole revised list printed in 1952. National Jeweler’s report on spinel in 2016 summed up the 1952 revision as adding alexandrite, citrine, tourmaline and zircon, which is wrong on two of the four: tourmaline had been October’s addition since 1912, and citrine appears nowhere in the 1952 report. Jewelers of America, the American Gem Society and GIA all print it without a year.
Part of the reason is that no one was ever appointed to keep the calendar. A trade association adopted it in 1912 and an industry council revised it in 1952, with three bodies approving. The two latest additions were announced by organisations acting together, and none of them became a keeper obliged to publish what changed and when.
It was argued about at the time
The list was attacked within days. The New York Times ran an editorial under the headline “Jewelers Make a Mistake.” We know the editorial only from the reply to it by the gem dealer and author W. R. Cattelle, a letter to the paper that the trade press reprinted on 21 August, in which he quotes the headline back at the editors. His defence of the new list concedes that the old lists disagreed:
“There is no one universal ancient list of birthstones. The ancients did not know enough about each other and stones to make one… It is a growing knowledge of these ancient errors and differences which has operated against the birthstone business of late and has become an incentive to the jeweler to establish a definite list on a rational basis to supersede the conflicting old ones.”
He still claimed continuity. Birthstones, he wrote, are “an evolution of superstitions which was gradually formulated in various countries,” and he asked why it was worse for a modern jeweller to fit the ancient list to modern requirements than it had been for an ancient one to do the same. The defence of 1912 is that adapting the list is what people have always done to it. Birthstones survive, Cattelle wrote, “not so much as influences on life and destiny as kindly remembrances, about which the mist of ancient fancy clings.”
Kunz rejected the list. “This suggested radical change or violation cannot be permitted,” he wrote, and his objection was about what a list of this kind is for: “Once we allow the spirit of commercialism pure and simple to dictate the choice of such stones, according to the momentary interest of dealers, there is grave danger that the only true incentive to acquire birth-stones will be weakened and people will lose interest in them.” He was defending sentiment, and he said so, calling true sentiment “one of the best things in human nature.”
Kunz also held that “there should be no duplication or triplication of birth-stones for any given month,” which in 1912 was an objection to five months carrying two names; the current chart gives three months three stones each. And on the ruby and turquoise swap, favoured on the ground that a warm-coloured gem suited high summer and a pale one suited winter, he pointed out that the reasoning runs backwards: it is in winter that people seek warmth, and in the heat of summer that “nothing is more grateful than coolness.”
Old, recent, and the difference
A date tells a reader which tradition they are holding. Ruby for July, on the standard list, is a Kansas City decision of 1912, though Kunz noted that an older Polish list had put it in July before. The habit of reading twelve stones as twelve months reaches back to Josephus’s suggestion in the first century, and the ring with the stone of one’s birth month to the fashion Pouget described in 1762. Calling every one of them ancient blurs them together, and it takes something from each.
It takes most from the newest stones. Tanzanite was found in Tanzania in 1967 and has been December’s since 2002. Spinel joined August in 2016. Introduced in the vocabulary of the breastplate, they lose the story they have, which is a new stone joining an old custom while people who saw it happen are still alive. Cattelle’s point holds for them as well as for 1912, and their dates should travel with them.
We would rather date the claim, and leave the meaning where people have put it.
The standard we hold
The bar applies across the site rather than only to this corner of it. Where we call a stone’s association traditional, we will tell you which century and who decided. Where we cannot, we will write that we cannot rather than reaching for the word.
Applied to this list, that means naming the document each time. An assignment made in that Kansas City room is a 1912 assignment. One made by the Jewelry Industry Council is a 1952 assignment. Tanzanite is 2002 and spinel is 2016. We have found no document for citrine’s arrival, or for why the 1952 printing stopped showing which stones were additions, and our pages say so.
The second half of the standard is the harder one. A site that invokes 1912 as its authority owes you the amendments as well as the date. Naming the founding vote while passing over 1952, 2002 and 2016 turns an amended list into something that sounds fixed. If the list is good enough to cite as a standard, it is good enough to cite as the amended standard it is.
For a reader, the standard reduces to one question. Ask when the stone became that month’s. Someone who knows will tell you, and someone who does not can say so, which is a useful answer in itself.
We applied that to ourselves before publishing it. We went back through our own twelve month-by-month pages and checked each one against the 1912 and 1952 printings. Six of them said something those printings do not support, and all six have been rewritten. Leaving the errors up would have broken the standard set out here.
The practical answer to the question in the title, then, is a room in Kansas City and the amendments since, inside a custom that was old before any of them. Use the current list, since it is the one in common use and there is no rival authority to prefer. Our month-by-month guides now carry the date each stone joined its month, wherever one exists, and each links to the pages for its stones in the Crystalance Mineral Library for anyone who wants the mineral as well as the month.
Sources
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews III.7.5 and III.7.7, translated by William Whiston, for the engraved names and the months or the zodiac: gutenberg.org
- George Frederick Kunz, The Curious Lore of Precious Stones (1913), chapter IX, pp. 307 to 321, for the twelve worn in turn, Poland, the Polish list’s ruby for July, the natal stone’s owner, Pouget, the 1912 list and his objections: gutenberg.org
- Pouget fils, Traité des pierres précieuses et de la maniere de les employer en parure, Paris, 1762, pp. 4 to 5, for the German invention and the birth-month rings: archive.org
- The Jewelers’ Circular and the Horological Review, vol. 65 no. 2, 14 August 1912, report of the seventh annual convention of the American National Retail Jewelers’ Association at Kansas City, with Abel’s address and the adopted list printed in full: archive.org
- The Jewelers’ Circular, vol. 65 no. 3, 21 August 1912, reprinting W. R. Cattelle’s letter to The New York Times: archive.org
- Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, vol. 120 no. 11, August 1952, p. 219, “Changed Birthstone List Receives OK From Trade”: archive.org
- Gems & Gemology, Winter 2002, gemological abstracts, abstracting R. Weldon, “Birth of a birthstone,” Professional Jeweler vol. 5 no. 12, 2002, p. 33, for the tanzanite addition and the bodies behind it: gia.edu
- National Jeweler, “JA, AGTA Add Spinel as August Birthstone,” 2 June 2016, for the spinel addition and its summary of the 1952 revision: nationaljeweler.com
- GIA, November birthstones, for citrine without a year: gia.edu
- GIA, tanzanite history and lore, for the 1967 find: gia.edu
- American Gem Society, birthstones by month, the current chart used in the table above: americangemsociety.org
- Jewelers of America, birthstones by month, for the organisation’s account of the list’s 1912 origin and its own descent from the 1912 association: jewelers.org
