Richard W. Hughes is an American gemmologist whose work on ruby and sapphire has shaped how the modern trade understands corundum. He is the author of Ruby & Sapphire: A Gemologist's Guide, first issued in 1997 and substantially expanded in the 2017 edition, a reference that sits on the shelf of nearly every coloured-stone laboratory and serious dealer. In 2014 he co-founded Lotus Gemology in Bangkok, where he and his wife Wimon Manorotkul, together with E. Billie Hughes, run one of the small group of laboratories whose corundum reports are accepted by auction houses and the international trade.

Career

Hughes trained at the GIA and at the AIGS in Bangkok, then spent most of his career in Asia, working through laboratory roles at AGTA-GTL in New York and the AIGS before returning to Bangkok. His professional life has been built around the centres of corundum production and trade — Mogok, Mong Hsu, Chanthaburi, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, and East Africa — and his writing reflects long, direct fieldwork in those regions rather than a desk-based reading of secondary sources.

Ruby & Sapphire and other writing

The 1997 first edition of Ruby & Sapphire was the first comprehensive single-author treatment of corundum in English in modern gemmology. The 2017 edition runs to more than 800 pages and incorporates two additional decades of laboratory work, treatment evolution, and field observation. Hughes has also written extensively for Gems & Gemology, The Journal of Gemmology, and InColor, and his website Ruby-Sapphire.com is a long-running open repository of articles, field reports, and historical material on coloured stones.

His tone in print is plainspoken and at times polemical. He is among the more outspoken voices in the trade on subjects such as the history of treatment disclosure, the limits of geographic-origin determination, and what he regards as overreach by some laboratories in their origin attributions.

Lotus Gemology

Lotus Gemology was founded as a specialist coloured-stone laboratory focused on ruby, sapphire, and spinel. The lab's reports use a colour-grading scheme developed in-house and named after lotus references that have become familiar shorthand in the trade — Pigeon Blood for the most saturated, slightly fluorescent reds in ruby, and Royal Blue for the corresponding top tier in sapphire. Lotus reports are widely accepted by major dealers and auction houses, and have become a near-default option for fine corundum coming out of Bangkok cutting.

Influence

Hughes's influence runs along three lines. First, his writing has set the educational baseline for a generation of corundum dealers and gemmologists. Second, his fieldwork — particularly his repeated trips into Mogok and the Mong Hsu region during politically difficult periods — produced primary source material that no desk-based researcher could replicate. Third, Lotus Gemology's reporting has given the trade an alternative to the historical Swiss laboratories for fine ruby and sapphire, with consequences for both pricing and the geography of coloured-stone certification.

In the trade

For dealers and collectors, the practical takeaway is that a Lotus Gemology report carries weight comparable to Gübelin or SSEF for corundum, and that Hughes's published work is the standard educational reference on the species. His critical posture toward laboratory practice has not made him universally popular within the laboratory establishment, but the trade reads his books regardless.

Further reading

• Lotus Gemology — laboratory and reports
• GIA Gems & Gemology — Hughes contributions
• ICA / Gemstone.org — coloured-stone trade resources