The awards assume significance as it had received 492 entries in various categories, which is the largest in the history of competition. The judging occurred in New York and the adjudicators included the renowned names like Ronald W. Arends of Aires Jewellers; Stephen M. Avery of Stephen M. Avery; Deirdre Featherstone of Featherstone Design; Lauren Kulchinsky-Levison of Mayfair Rocks; and Aron Suna of Suna Bros. 

 The most important thing about these awards are that they  are judged on the basis of overall beauty, wearability, innovative design and use of materials, quality of gemstones and workmanship, and broad-based consumer appeal with the potential to generate positive publicity for natural colored gemstones. 

As Douglas K Hucker of AGTA, says, “We never used to get more than a dozen, but this year we had 40 silver entries.” He further elaborates that at least 50 percent of those were combined with gold. Other competition trends included fewer rough-cut stones and increased combinations of colors thanks to industry’s close watch of fashion color news (think Pantone’s Color of the Year). 

“Designers are not haphazardly putting colors together,” he added. “They are creating complementary and analogous combinations and pieces of jewelry that reflect what’s coming off the racks in clothing.”