To remain competitive, companies are supposed to know the internal and external factors that are present in their sector and global reality, obtaining information that allow them to formulate strategies in order to stay in the market. Having this necessity in mind, the present dissertation presents the study on entrepreneurial, structural and systematic competitive factors in micro, small and medium-sized companies in the field of precious stones in Soledade RS. Through surveys, questionnaires have been applied to businesspeople from thirty-one precious stones industries, with the purpose of identifying the factors that exert major influence on the competitiveness of precious stones companies from Soledade - RS, according to the businesspeople s perception, with product delimitation of rough stones, stone works and artefacts and lapidated stones, by using the model of Coutinho and Ferraz (1995) and Ferraz, Kupfer and Haguenauer (1995). It has been verified that the groups of systematic and structural factors are the ones that mostly influence the competitiveness in this sample of companies. However, it has to be emphasized that, when comparing the average rates of influence of the three groups of variants (entrepreneurial, structural and systematic factors), the percentages obtained have been very much alike, from what may be concluded that the competitiveness of precious stones companies from Soledade is related to strategies that integrate these three groups of factors with similar degrees of influence. / Para que as empresas consigam se manter competitivas precisam conhecer os fatores internos e externos presentes na sua realidade setorial e global, obtendo informações que lhes permitam formular estratégias para se manterem no mercado. Tendo em vista essa necessidade, o presente trabalho de dissertação apresenta o estudo de fatores de competitividade empresariais, estruturais e sistêmicos em micro, pequenas e médias empresas industriais pertencentes ao setor de pedras preciosas de Soledade RS. Através de uma pesquisa de levantamento, foram aplicados questionários aos empresários de trinta e uma empresas industriais de pedras preciosas com o objetivo de identificar os fatores que exercem maior influência na competitividade das empresas de pedras preciosas de Soledade RS, segundo a percepção dos empresários, com delimitação nos produtos pedras preciosas em bruto, obras e artefatos em pedra e pedras lapidadas, utilizando o modelo de Coutinho e Ferraz (1995) e de Ferraz, Kupfer e Haguenauer (1995). Verificou-se que os conjuntos dos fatores sistêmicos e dos fatores estruturais são os que mais exercem influência na competitividade deste grupo de empresas. Porém, ressalva-se que ao se comparar os índices médios de influência dos três conjuntos de variáveis (fatores empresariais, estruturais e sistêmicos), obtiveram-se percentuais muito próximos, do que se conclui que a competitividade das empresas industriais de pedras preciosas de Soledade está relacionada a estratégias que integram esses três conjuntos de fatores com graus semelhantes de influência.

This thesis investigates the potential and limits of portable Raman spectrometers for their application in situ in the environment of museum collections. The data sets were obtained at the two locations. The first measurement took place in the Jewish Museum in Prague. Here we have studied stones from a silver Torah shield from the first half of the nineteen century. This shield is decorated with a set of precious and semi-precious stones and glass imitations. The shield originates from Poland and has been studied using two portable Raman spectrometers (785 nm and 532 and excitations). The second measurement took place in the premises of the Prague Loreto where we had available, at that time still unshown, objects of art for the forthcoming new exhibition. It was about jewelry like earrings, rings, bracelets and brooches, also about ordinary objects of daily use like mirrors, bowls and perfume bottles, or about the objects with religious themes, mostly crowns for the Virgin Mary and baby jesus. The obtained Raman bands correspond well with the reference values of the minerals, the deviation ranged in the order of +/- 3 cm-1 , which in general permits unambiguous identification of phases. Portable handheld Raman spectrometers working with a laser wavelength of 785 nm and 532 nm were able to quickly...

Since the East Texas area has many minerals in the categories which yield semiprecious stones of commercial value--jasper, wood agate, wood opal, and silicified stone, the author undertook this study to determine: (1) the extent which these minerals could be utilized as sources for gems; (2) the equipment necessary for cutting and polishing the stones; and (3) the techniques for finishing the gems.

Gemlike objects are a nearly ubiquitous phenomenon in the medium of glass, although culturally specific studies remain scarce. This dissertation considers the production of such works in the early medieval period, primarily in association with Abbasid rule. The first half attends to several accessory issues, including glass-related terminology, glass-coloring treatises, the lives of glassworkers, gemstone connoisseurship, and the legal status of such products. These demonstrate a range of coexisting attitudes, including the desirability of such works for their own sake rather than as surreptitious substitutes for “true” gemstones. The second half focuses on an exemplary object, an opaque turquoise glass bowl from the Treasury of San Marco in Venice, which I propose was produced in Baghdad for the caliph al-Mutawakkil just after the year 850. I then consider this work’s changing reception from late medieval Venice to modern scholarship, including ways in which “correct” interpretations of its material and/or origin have been repeatedly supplanted by false leads. The fundamental argument is that gemlike vessels like the San Marco turquoise were not deceptive stand-ins but rather intended to exercise complex discursive practices, both political and connoisseurial in nature, a function that ultimately remains in effect today.

En raison de l’hétérogénéité et de l’extravagance de leur contenu, les lapidaires ont souvent été délaissés et restent, encore à ce jour, très peu considérés dans les études sur la littérature médiévale. Le nombre important de manuscrits répertoriés attestent pourtant de leur grande popularité et de la place qu’occupaient les pierres précieuses dans la société et la littérature médiévales. Le lapidaire anonyme tanscrit par le manuscrit Paris, BnF, fonds français, 2007, un lapidaire en prose daté du XVe siècle, n’est à ce jour abordé que dans une seule étude, celle de Barbara Geromel, qui s’est intéressée surtout à un autre témoin (le Turin, Biblioteca Reale, Varia 110) dont le contenu – même s’il est incomplet – correspond en tout point à celui du manuscrit de Paris. Ce lapidaire en prose s’inscrit dans une histoire longue et riche, celle des pierres précieuses depuis l’Antiquité, mais s’en démarque également par son organisation complexe de la matière, puisqu’il adopte de manière partielle et imparfaite le paradigme alphabétique, jusqu’alors très peu employé dans les encyclopédies dû aux tensions qu’il incarnait vis-à-vis l’ordre théologique. Témoin matériel d’une sphère plus considérable encore – celle de l’encyclopédisme médiéval –, ce lapidaire participe à la compilation du savoir de jadis et invite à une étude plus approfondie, à la fois de la matière qu’il recèle, de ses sources, issues d’une quantité importante de traditions manuscrites, et de son classement alphabétique. / Regarding the heterogeneity and extravagant nature of their content, the lapidaries have too often been put aside from studies concerning medieval literature, and, still to this day, only a few of them have been studied by scholars. However, the very high number of known manuscripts of such texts does tell us a lot about the popularity and the role played by precious gems within medieval society and litterature. The prose lapidary copied in ms Paris, BnF, fonds français, 2007, a prosaic lapidary dated from the XVth century, has yet only been mentioned once, in a study by Barbara Geromel, who was mostly interested by another manuscript – albeit incomplete – of the same text : ms Turin, Biblioteca Reale, Varia 110. The content remaining in this manuscript corresponds precisely to the one found within the Paris manuscript. This manuscript written in prose represents one single step in a long and rich history (the tradition of describing precious stones dating back to the Antiquity). Nervertheless, it also differs from this tradition by its complex inner organisation of the subject, since it puts to use to this effect an imperfect and incomplete alphabetical paradigm as a mean of classification, an unpopular paradigm at the time, as it embodied elements difficult to correlate with the theological order. This lapidary, a material witness of an even larger intelectual context – the world of mediaeval encyclopedism –, participates to the compilation of knowledge from older times, and calls for deeper studies of its general content, sources (themselves coming from varied manuscript traditions) and usage of an alphabetical classification.