"Rhinestones" What is it and where did they come from?

In gemology, rhinestones are imitations of precious stones made from special types of jewelry glass. The glasses themselves have long been used to imitate precious stones both in the form of carvings and in the form of jewelry for various purposes. The very name "rhinestones" appeared thanks to a talented glassmaker from Alsace - Georg Friedrich Strass (1701-1773), who developed several different compositions of glasses with a high refractive index to imitate jewelry stones. Initially, these were varieties of crystal with additions of bismuth and thallium, but later they carried out work on staining the glasses in various colors, close to the colors of natural stones. Friedrich Strass also widely used methods of improving gloss by fusing glass onto a metal substrate. The use of a foil backing was widely used at that time to enhance the brilliance of gemstones in jewelry. Strass for a long time was the exclusive supplier of jewelry glasses for the needs of the French court and the most noble aristocratic houses of France. Currently, due to the long-term popularity of rhinestones as a high-quality imitation of precious stones, in commercial practice rhinestones are often called plastic imitations of precious stones, doublets, artificial and synthetic stones, and even imitations from cheap varieties of natural stones. This is, in principle, a misuse of the term "rhinestone", misleading the buyer.