Gemstone characteristic that lends value to a gemstone. Apart from jewelry, from earliest antiquity engraved gems and hardstone carvings, such as cups, were major luxury art forms. A gem maker is called a lapidary or gemcutter; a diamond cutter is called a diamantaire. The traditional classification in the West, which goes back to the ancient Greeks, begins with a distinction between "precious" and "semi-precious"; similar distinctions are made in other cultures. In modern use the precious stones are diamond, ruby, sapphire and emerald, with all other gemstones being semi-precious. This distinction reflects the rarity of the respective stones in ancient times,
Gemstone Publishing then to Gemstone, which has been the home of Cochran's EC reprints for over 15 years. Reprinting the Cochran/Gladstone-reprints of "The Haunt of Fear", "The Vault of Horror" and "Weird Science" (all 1992), Gemstone also republished (in single issue and 'annual' - four issues per 'annual' - format): Oversize, hardback, slip-cased collections of these comics had been previously published in black & white by Cochran during the 1980s as "The Complete EC Library". This Library was then added to by Cochran/Gemstone with 2005's "Picto-Fiction" collection, comprising the EC comics: "Confessions Illustrated", "Crime Illustrated", "Shock Illustrated" and "Terror Illustrated", along with