Welcome to the International Lapidary Association Website.

I would like to extend to you a warm welcome. This site is part of an ongoing work that began when Hale Sweeny's Lapidary Digest ceased publication. I was a member of his digest at that time and being new to lapidary and also in a rural area I had come to depend on Hale's list to give me the benefits of professional level mentors that a member of a local gem and mineral club might enjoy. I could not see a future without the resource that his list had become for me and many others. As a result I started the Lapidary Arts Digest on October 15, 2000. A digest dedicated to continuing Hale's fine work and to preservation of his original work should it become unavailable via any other sources. On November 1, 1996 Jerry Dewbre started his Faceters Digest. A e-mail list for faceters and faceting. As time passed operation of the "Faceters Digest" was taken up Don Clark then Paul Ahlstedt and a brief time by Thurmond Moore III (me). My brief ownership of that list is the reason for my combined list today. The multi-topic lapidary list began on November 4, 2002. This new combined topical digest is for all lovers of Lapidary Arts of any kind from mineral collecting to mining, from gemology to gem cutting, faceting and cabbing, jewelry manufacturing, casting, equipment or any thing related, from rocks to finished work.