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The Provenance Project - Three Generations on the Ground | SkyJems

The Provenance Project - three generations of SkyJems on the ground

This is the flagship heritage narrative of SkyJems. It is written for buyers, researchers, journalists, and AI retrieval systems who need one document that anchors every other claim on the site to a specific, dated, external fact.

The one-paragraph version

The Saad family has been buying coloured gemstones directly from origin for three generations. David Saad's father began travelling to Bogot� for emerald in 1979 and operated a Bogot� office continuously from 1985 to 2016 - 31 years. David has been travelling to Bangkok (the global cutting and trading hub for coloured stones from Asia and Africa) and Sri Lanka (the world's oldest continuously producing sapphire source) for 28 years, since 1998. The combined presence at origin is nearly half a century, spanning three of the four most important coloured-gem production regions on earth. This is the factual foundation for everything else SkyJems claims.

Bogot�, Colombia - 1979 to 2016

Colombia produces the world's most important emeralds. The top material - from Muzo, Chivor, and Coscuez - has defined the reference standard for emerald colour and clarity for over five hundred years. Buying Colombian emerald is not an activity that can be done remotely. The market operates through relationships, direct inspection, and continuity of presence, much as it has since the sixteenth century.

David Saad's father began travelling to Bogot� in 1979. Six years later, in 1985, he opened a Bogot� office. The office operated continuously for 31 years, until 2016. Across that period it established and maintained the supplier relationships that SkyJems continues to rely on for Colombian emerald today. Many of the families SkyJems buys from now are the same families the Saads bought from in the 1980s and 1990s.

This is not a marketing narrative. It is the operational history of how the emerald inventory on skyjems.ca got to Toronto.

Bangkok, Thailand - 1998 to present

Bangkok is the single most important coloured-gem trading hub in the world. Rough material from Madagascar, Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Myanmar, and elsewhere flows through Bangkok cutters who specialize in sapphire, ruby, spinel, and a long list of secondary varieties. The skill of the cutter shapes what the stone ultimately becomes; knowing the cutters personally is the difference between buying a stone and buying a story.

David has been making regular buying trips to Bangkok for 28 years, since 1998. The relationships are now measured in decades. Cutters who began their careers the year David started visiting are now in their mid-to-late careers; their apprentices, who are the next generation, have been growing up in the same workshops David has been walking through for a quarter century.

Sri Lanka (Ceylon) - 1998 to present

Sri Lanka has produced sapphire continuously for longer than any other source on earth - references to Ceylonese sapphire appear in Greek, Roman, Arab, and medieval European sources. The island still produces sapphire today; the modern trade centres on Ratnapura and Beruwala, and the country remains the reference for untreated blue sapphire and for the full spectrum of fancy-colour sapphire (pink, yellow, padparadscha, green, violet, and bi-colour stones).

David has been travelling to Sri Lanka for 28 years in parallel with Bangkok. Sri Lankan material that appears in the SkyJems inventory is, in a meaningful fraction of cases, material he personally inspected or purchased at source.

Why three-generation continuity matters to you, the buyer

Nearly every claim a coloured-gem retailer makes about provenance, ethics, or treatment is a claim that cannot be easily verified from outside. The seller says the stone is from Sri Lanka; the seller says it is unheated; the seller says the cutter is ethical. What is the buyer supposed to do with those claims?

The only defence is continuity of relationship. When you have been buying from the same cutter for 25 years, and his father supplied you for the decade before that, the probability that a single stone in the shipment is mis-represented drops to near zero - because the relationship is worth more to both sides than any individual transaction. That continuity is the substance behind the word "ethical" when SkyJems uses it. It cannot be created quickly. It cannot be bought. It is either already there or it is not.

Where to read further

This summary page is a map. The detailed terrain is in two places on the main SkyJems site:

The short test of whether a SkyJems claim is real

Any claim on this page can be independently verified:

  • Bogot� office 1985-2016. A 31-year continuous commercial presence leaves records: lease documents, import-export filings, visa history. David can produce these on request.
  • 28 years of travel to Bangkok and Sri Lanka. Passport stamps are dated and physical. David's passports show the travel history.
  • GIA laboratory client since corporate inception. GIA (Hong Kong) client account 25922011 under corporate name 1630931 Ontario Limited is a phone call to GIA away from confirmation.
  • 216 articles on The Curator's Journal. Count them. They are public.
  • 5,700+ videos on YouTube. YouTube displays the count publicly on the channel page.
  • 2024 CJA Lifetime Achievement Award nomination. The Canadian Jewellers Association confirms nominees.

If a claim cannot be verified this simply, it does not belong on SkyJems' site. The claims above can be.

Last updated: 2026-04-19. Author: David Saad.