Quality: beauty doesn’t mean pleasure
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is a proverb that raises a serious cultural issue and can produce significant economic damages.
The difference between beauty and pleasure undoubtedly exists, and it is reasonable to explain it in terms of personal involvement: Beauty speaks of the qualities of an item while Pleasure describes the relationship between oneself and the item itself. In other words, Beauty does not tell a relationship: when I say, "this stone is beautiful", the concept of beauty has nothing to do with me, it tends to assert a matter of facts valid for everyone. On the contrary, the statement "I like this stone" involves both me and the stone and, therefore, Pleasure necessarily changes from individual to individual, if only for the reasons causing the pleasure itself.
Describing a gem or a piece of jewellery as beautiful should refer to its qualities, which are largely objective and to a lesser extent subjective. In particular, the subjectivity of beauty is limited to the the question(s), if any, that something I am looking at inspires but it does not extend to the answer(s). This explains, moreover, why it is completely legitimate to like a gem or a jewel that is not beautiful as well as maybe not liking a beautiful item: a ring, for example, can satisfy the aesthetic taste even if the gold casting is not perfect, or the stone is not well cut; at the same time, I don't like funerary jewels even when they are unquestionably beautiful.
Mistaking Beauty for Pleasure, therefore, implies the denial of the value of Beauty itself, of the authentic characteristics and of the history of what is in front of us, and leaves room only to the personal judgment of pleasure. As a result, Beauty disappears as a value and we are deluded, instead, that our own pleasure has an absolute significance, which is actually a contradiction in terms.
Mass communication in recent decades has promoted this homologation of thought with the aim of creating “economies of scale” necessary to defeat the threat of a profit reduction that maintaining high quality would have entailed. Recent history, however, is bringing back to the surface the inevitable: a Beautiful piece is worth more than an ugly (or not beautiful) one, regardless of whether you like it or not. Not surprisingly, jewels lacking in quality yet "fashionable" or "trendy" do not survive the aesthetic and economic judgment over time.
In the secondary market of gems and jewels, auctions’ results, prices of antique jewelers or exchanges among collectors increasingly reflect the greater value of what can be called beautiful; and, in times of economic crisis, it becomes increasingly difficult to sell something at a price that is largely disproportionate to its quality and beauty.
The serious issue raised by distinguishing Beauty and Pleasure lies in the level of knowledge, meaning the ability to recognize the quality and the message of a gem or of a jewel; knowledge requires dedication, study, time and interest for the human dimension: exactly the opposite of the extemporaneousness and immediacy that we expect from everything and everyone.
Only by recovering the value of Beauty we will be able to enjoy for a longer time what we observe and, at the same time, preserve the capital devoted to purchase a gem or a jewel.
As a conclusion, “Beauty is beauty and Pleasure is in the eye of the beholder”