Ruby-Jade-Sapphire-Pearl-Diamonds - Jewelry + more

AQUAMARINE 

Aquamarine gemstone is a transparent, pale water blue beryl with iron giving it the green/blue tint, varying from pale green to deep sea green.

Aquamarine is relatively inexpensive and mined in India, Siberia and Brazil, the most abundant source of aquamarine. This blue green stone is heated to produce the blue color so popular in modern jeweler. A magnificent example of 46 carats is in the Allison Australian gem Collection.

From light blue to the deep blue of the ocean, aquamarines have a great spectrum of blue colors.

Aquamarine is a real beautiful gemstone. People like aquamarine for its fine blue shades which goes with any skin or eye color.

Aquamarines seem to have captured the blue color varieties of the oceans. According to the legend aquamarine comes right from treasure box of a beautiful mermaids. Since ancient times, aquamarine been seen as the sailors' luck stone.

Carnelian backlit by the sun

Apart from a diamond unique flashes of light and color from its faceted stone, the diamond has special properties and is the hardest of all stones. The best gem quality stones are colorless and transparent with a slightly blue tint but the pink and tinted diamonds are becoming popular also.

Diamonds are said to have first been found in India more than 2000 years ago. Previously in that country diamonds were known but were never cut because it was believed that it had magical properties were destroyed by cutting. Cutting in Europe began after 1300 AD

Lasers are now used to cut diamonds but the only mineral capable of cutting a diamond is a diamond.

Top world producers now are northern Australia which supplies 1/4 of the world's needs - particularly for industrial purposes and also the colored "champagne diamonds" and in the

South African Kimberley  region. 3 stone diamond ring antique diamond rings blue diamond ring diamond band ring diamond bands diamond emerald ring diamond heart ring diamond ring diamond ring yellow gold diamond rings diamond solitaire diamond solitaire ring diamond solitaire rings diamonds rings eternity diamond band jewelry yellow diamond ring.

EMERALD

The emerald is such a beautiful gemstone its hardly to beat. Maybe a great piece of imperial jade somehow can match a emerald

in beauty and value. Emerald as a gem stone with a good cut and clearance is for sure a valuable investment into a great piece of jewelry. Emerald bracelet are typical emerald jewelry, a emerald necklace with some great cut emeralds embedded in white or yellow gold is the dream of many girls.

Emerald prices are rather high, actually the prices always depend very much on the clarity and the size of the emerald. Emerald rings with the right cut emerald stones maybe together with some princess cut diamond are just the right material for a great engagement ring.

Emeralds are green forms of Beryl and the best are found in Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia. Also India and Pakistan have some mines but the finest are said to come from Colombia near Chivor where they  occur in veins within dark shales and limestone.

The Ural Mountains which are rich in emeralds retain the world market and Egypt's emerald mines are over 4,000 years old.

Pliny speaks of a colossal emerald statue of Serapis 13 1/2 feet high, in the ancient Egyptian labyrinth.

It was called the "king" of green stones with extremely high value because of its rarity and the fact that seldom was there gemstone cut that was without flaw.

The largest known emerald discovered was 11,000 carats found in an uncut state in South Africa. The largest cut stone of quality was 1,347 carats but it had obvious flaws. The largest perfect stone known was the Tsar of  Russia's - 30 carats.The Crown of the Andes made in 1593-99 in South America had 453 emeralds the largest being of 45 carats. However synthetic emeralds in modern times have plausible inclusions so testing must be done carefully in determining the quality of stone.

Amethyst and Garnet Pendant
Photo by sweetlovetatum2

GARNET - Garnets are found in various shades and colors from brown to purple shades.

But its dark red garnet variety is valued as a precious stone although the mineral is quite common.

Garnet crystals are 12 faced. The stones have been prized in jewellery for over 5000 years. When many garnet crystals are gathered in a rock cavity they are likened to a ripe pomegranate.

Cut as garnet brilliants, garnets are used as ring stones with large ones as pendants, often with cabochon cut and carved.

Garnets and star garnets from are found in Australia.

MOONSTONE - Moonstone is a Feldspar, comprised of calcium sodium or potassium aluminum silicates. Sri Lanka is the most important source of Moonstone. India produces strongly colored stones as beige, pink, green, yellow, grey, white and brown.

Moonstone is considered to be a sacred stone in India and by tradition, it is always cut as cabochon. It is an important stone in Ayurvedic medicine. Beautiful sheens come as with other stones, with subjected light and its particular sheen is called "adularescence" and most prized when the sheen is bluish in color. Throughout the world it is associated with the Moon and very popular semi precious stone is used in jewellery everywhere. Their fascination lies in their gentle glowing and elusive sheen and above all the softness of their quality, compared with the strength and brilliance of faceted jewels.

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some and also Idaho... Opals are usually cut as en cabochon. Their varieties include - Hungarian opals are very fine and were once popular in Europe.

Mexican Opals fine transparent variety of opal - Black opals are extremely vivid flashes of color including red, with dark background and of highest value Milky opal or white opals are opaque with smaller and less spectacular softer markings and colors. Fire opals or Harlequin Opal is the finest quality and variety of gemstone Water Opal is clear and colorless with internal play of color. Rose Opal or potch opal has a beautiful pink color but opaque. Hydrophane Opal is opaque but appears colorless in water.

PERIDOT - is somehow unique, peridot is found in several places on planet Earth and also be found on Mars. Peridot is the softest gemstone. That's probably the reason why Peridot is less popular than the other gemstones. Peridot has a vibrant green color somehow better than emeralds.

In ancients times people believed peridot has the power to reduce a person’s anxiety, helps create a successful marriage, change dreams into reality, keeps away nightmares and evil spirits, and gives power to enable a person to communicate well.

Peridot comes in a variety of colors, ranging from light yellowish green to deep olive color. Like emeralds, the greener the color, the higher the value of a peridot stone.

Peridot is clearer than emerald and it comes in various shapes, sizes and hues. Its value is higher if the texture and surface is clear and the color is deep green. It has a rather oily and greasy appearance. Like an emerald, a peridot could have inclusions in form of bubbles and flaws, means clarity is very important in looking for a good quality peridot stone.

Using peridot for jewelry it should be considered that peridot is a sensitive gemstone and can be damaged easily.  High temperature should be avoided and acids can damage the stone..

RUBY - Next to diamond, rubies (and sapphires) are the most valued of the gems. Ruby is a variety of corundum.

When the corundum includes chromium, it becomes ruby, when it contains titanium and iron instead and therefore is blue - the sapphire.

The world's finest ruby come from Myanmar or Burma, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Thailand, India and Ceylon .Burmese ones are exceptionally beautiful - found near Mogok N.E. of Mandalay.

"Pigeon Blood" rubies are the highest in the scale of value. Thai Rubies are often found with spinel and  

are darker red than the Burmese Rubies.

A fine ruby is a magnificent gemstone. Ruby has been synthetically produced successfully since 1904.

But the genuine rubies are valued because of their rarity and therefore have not dropped in commercial value, in fact have risen. Rubies are also used in Space research in connection with communication systems to cut out surface sounds of the earth and pick up beams from space.

There is a refreshing emphasis on minerals like this beautiful Heliotrop. It is always good to see material from old localities where I used to collect while growing up in Connecticut. Northeast dealers were not the only ones there though. Cal Graeber Minerals (P.O. Box 2347, Fallbrook, CA 92088) had some of the superb peridot crystals that have been coming out of Pyaung Gaung, Myanmar (= Burma) recently. The crystal faces are rough, as though etched, but the interiors are extremely gemmy and of a fine green color. Some of these were available at the Tucson Show.

The Bennett mine in Buckfield, Maine produced some fine specimens last season. These included mil quartz crystals, cassiterite, columbite, hydroxylherderite, pollucite and cookeite. The most exciting crystals were the multicolored elbaites in shades of green and pink. Both Jim Mann (Box 597, Bethel, ME 04217) and Cal Graeber had some of these elbaites.

Leonard Himes of Minerals America had a pleasant surprise---a fine group of emerald crystals from North Carolina having several small rutiles attached and included.

The whole specimen stands 4.8 cm high. Leonard also had several specimens from the Zomba-Malosa Complex, Chilwa Alkaline Province, Malawi (see the article in the January-February issue). The best known mineral from this locality is aegerine, which Leonard had in crystals up to 16 cm long, plus several zircon crystals, sometimes attached to the aegerines. Pakistan continues to produce interesting new minerals, or just better ones than from other localities. Dudley Blauwet of Mountain Minerals International keeps on top of these things. He had some rather nice zircon from Buibin, near Astar, Waziret district, Northern Areas. They are clean, reddish brown dipyramids in what appeared to be a very impure marble, in crystals up to 1.5 cm. Some of these have been available recently, but as loose crystals with no matrix.

Blue zircon and aquamarine bracelet from Lgarrison@new.rr.com

Besides the fine serandite and leifite, Gilles Haineault offered a fine group of carltonite crystals as singles to 1 cm and large groups to 14 cm across.

Also very interesting from the Bennett mine, was a rhodochrosite crystal 2 cm tall that some were claiming to be the best such crystal to come from a granite pegmatite (see photo). Although not as deep a purple as the fluorapatites of Mt. Apatite, those of Mt. Rubellite are quite fine. Jim showed me one, 1.3 cm across on a matrix of quartz prisms, that I would have been quite proud to own.

It seems that the mineral specimens lately just keep getting better from the Bunker Hill mine, Kellogg, Idaho. John Cesar had for sale some cerussite from the recent efforts at that mine. The lustrous white crystals are nicely twinned, in groups up to 11.5 cm, that could almost be mistaken for Tsumeb.

The weather was typically cold and rainy, but since few of us left the confines of the hotel for the duration of the Symposium, it hardly mattered. There was of course, a fascinating group of speakers with topics that ranged from technical to entertaining to disturbing.

Ruby gem mine selection Myanmar Burma

So, get ready for a trip back in time and a tour of lost gem mines. The players in this venue are several men, long since dead, whose manuscripts are perennial in the spirit they convey.

Perhaps you will find that, though the centuries may pass, life is in many ways still the same as it was then.

What the Arabs Say about Corundum

A well-known treatise written around 1240 A.D. by a man named Teifaschi describes a wide range of gem materials. Like other Arabs who wrote about gems, Teifaschi places much emphasis on yaqut, a term that at times embraced several gem species but seemed most often to signify corundum. He delineates its color varieties, discusses sources, and notes that "it is heavier than all other stones of the same size.' Speaking of deposits in what is now Sri Lanka, our author observes:

Yaqut is brought from a mine named Sahiran  which is on an island about forty parasangs beyond Sarandib [Sri Lanka]. The island itself is about sixty parasangs across. There is a large mountain on this island named Mount Rahun. Winds and torrents cause the yaqut to descend, after which it is collected [at the foot of the mountain]...

Ruby mining in Mogok Myanmar or Burma

The text appears to have been garbled in its rendition, for there is no island near Sri Lanka that meets this description. In fact, this passage refers to gem material found in the area about Adam's Peak in Sri Lanka's Ratnapura district. Adam's Peak (Rahun was often mentioned in these accounts, and not only for its minerals; it was revered among Muslims as a place of pilgrimage, for Adam himself was thought to have landed there when cast out from Paradise. Bearing in mind that Muslims have dominated Sri Lanka's gem trade since at least the 10th century, one can appreciate that these pilgrimages often doubled as business trips!