12 dozen or 144 rhinestones are in a gross. Where did the name rhinestone come from? The name came from pieces of glass that were found in the Rhine River in Austria. When first produced, rhinestones were cut and finished by hand. In the 1700s, a jeweler in Paris created a way to apply lead to the back of glass, which greatly enhanced the complexity, brilliance, and reflective quality of glass. Who was Daniel Swarovski? Daniel Swarovski was born in 1862 in Bohemia (then part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire). In the early nineteenth century he began experimenting on methods of faceting glass and created a glass-cutting machine that cut faceted glass. This process produced a crystal far superior to hand-cut crystal. The company was enormously successful and soon produced many optical products, abrasives and grinding tools, as well as decorative stones made from crystal. Fashion Industry … The arival of these lovely stones caused quite a stir in the fashion industry around the world in