Australian Facetors' Guild Limited

My suggestions, questions and comments are below.  Please comment on them or add further suggestions, questions and comments on this part of the proposal below.

I 1.1 Description of Faceting Terms

Clause m. - typo, "Man- Mad" should be "Man-Made".

Clause s. - Definitions should be not contain substantive rules.  "only allowed in Section 39D" should be in the Judging Features and/or in each of the Section descriptions as this is the first place a competitor will look.  The definition does not change the common meaning of translucent, yet we have a definition of Transparent for faceting which may vary from the common meaning leaving a void for uncertainty.

I suggest clause s. read as follows and a new General Notes be created as follows.

"s. Transparent Material for Faceting is any material that is not translucent (as defined in in this Part) and which is sufficiently translucent to see the outline or shadow of an object behind the material."

I 1.3 General Notes

"a. Translucent Material: Translucent Material is only allowed in Section 39D."

Renumber the remaining paragraphs.

Question

The definition of Transparent means that some jelly opal, rose quartz, moonstone and other facet grade but "sleepy" or fibrous material will not be eligible for Sections 39A to 39C.  Is there a reason for excluding them from those sections?  Should we amend the definition of Transparent to allow sleepy material if we can see the pavilion facet edges through the Crown, albeit somewhat fuzzily?

 

I 1.2 b. Interest, Design

This leads on from Aesthetic Appeal.  It is perhaps another aesthetic point.

This judging feature  should only be an issue where the competitor has licence to alter the design. 

Where the competition committee sets the design with no scope for a competitor to add or change the location of the facets there is no scope for this feature to be judged as all entries should be the same.

I think further guidance for judges and competitors needs to be included on this feature as there is scope for it if we allow competitors licence to produce their own variations on a set cut, for example by cutting into the edge of a stone to produce a star shaped outline.

Happy Faceting.

I 1.3General Notes

g. Scheduling Facet Cuts

Why must a competition committee keep the sections separate?  When adding new sections to a show schedule, there is often a lag as members try out the new competition.  This means that the first year the section is introduced there may me fewer entrants than in later years.  

The new sections are a case in point.  At a club level it may take several years before enough entries are received to have a decent competition in one of these sections.  If a competition committee wishes place two or more sections together into a competition section until enough entries are received to separate them out into separate sections, then why not let them do so, especially as there will be set designs for each sub-section competing for a place.

As Paul pointed out at the end of the proposal, judges are qualified to judge all likely sections, it is just going to need a small adjustment to the way we do things.

Whether a competitor choses to enter one design over another is up to the competitor, so there should not be arguments over the relative fairness of such a competition.  Such an issue can be mitigated by allowing the entrant to submit one stone for each cut in the competition section.

Happy Faceting

Charles,

I couldn't agree more.  The rules are such that they need interpretation to work out what you need to do.  

Would you agree part of the problem is that there are two components to the rules:

1. rules regarding how the stone is judged (ag for the competitor and judge); and
   
2. rules regarding how the competition committee should set the competition schedule and run the competition.

Really once the competition is set, the competitor wants to know what the judging features are and how they are judged.

Do you think we should provide clearer separation between what a competitor needs to do and what the committee needs to consider when setting the competition?

Another issue is that we seem to need to subdivide the Groups so that the same judging criteria applies to each stone in the section and that concave and fantasy cuts are separate from ordinary cuts.  It seems that once there is a Group or section for an entry, then it can not be included in another section.  This is more of a problem for the metal working sections (including silver smithing) as it makes entering some sections quite technical because competitors are not working to a set design.

The proposal for Group 39 arose because it was deemed concave cuts should never be allowed in so called standard cuts.  This lead to a discussion about opening up the rules to allow for other forms of faceting such as fantasy cuts, to provide more choice for competitions.  Hence the proposal.

Personally I think the rule change was made with unseemly haste.  It all could have been dealt with through the competition schedules while rule changes were considered and members views canvassed.