Imogen Hart

Imogen Hart writes The Pennyweight’s jewelry and materials desk. The work is documentary: she reads what a brand publishes about a piece — karat, gram weight, stone origin and treatment, the grading lab that issued the report, the setting and the price — and reports the figures alongside the market context that makes them mean something.

She is a research analyst, not a gemologist or a bench jeweller, and the site does not pretend otherwise. She has not graded a stone, sized a ring or assayed a metal, and she never publishes a number she has not read on a brand’s own site, in a grading report, or in a named publication. Where a spec is absent, the piece says the spec is absent rather than filling the gap.

The recurring job on this beat is separating the four things merchants sell under one word: natural stones, lab-grown stones, moissanite and treated stones. Several catalogues we cover mix all four. Imogen labels which is which every time, names the lab in the same sentence as any grade, and treats a merchant’s own trust, warranty or return claim as a claim to attribute — never as our statement.

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