Enticing yellow

Recently I fell in love with yellow gold; before that I have always only loved white gold. Given the gold price is fairly low at the moment it is actually a good time to get gold jewelry made. I have become such a 'yellow fan' I really wanted a yellow sapphire set in yellow gold. Pictured is the result. Photos really don't do justice.

I designed it along with a local jeweler. We decided to make the ring in mat finish. Stone looks magnificent against the mat background. I also wanted this to be a dress ring that I can wear everyday. Instead of spending money on cheaper fashion jewelry which I never feel like wearing twice, I thought its better to spend a bit more and get something made that I wouldn't get sick of wearing. It has worked so far, I wear it every day and I get so many compliments on it. And it feels special have a handmade jewelry.

Yellow sapphires are relatively inexpensive, yet so beautiful.

Elephant safari Sri Lanka

I am in Sri Lanka at the moment sourcing natural sapphires and visiting my family and friends. Along with some of my best friends, we visited Udawalawe National Park located in south Sri Lanka spreading across approximately 300 km².  This is home to many animals including elephants, monkeys, birds, leopards, deers and water buffalos. It is estimated that approximately 400 elephants live in this area. The Department of Wildlife Protection protects elephants and other animals from poachers and hunters in this area. 

I have visited this park a couple of times earlier, but the experience is magical each time. It was great to see elephant families relaxed and enjoying the wilderness. Amongst them were a few mischievous baby elephants. 

We also visited Udawalawe Elephant Transit Home; home for orphan elephants.  They do an extraordinary job in taking care of orphan elephants. None of the babies are kept by force; they simply live in the wild and visit the transit home every 3 hours for a few litres of milk. I cannot appreciate enough the work the staff and volunteers do tirelessly 24/7. There are 40 baby elephants under their care at the moment. If you are able to contribute, please do so by visiting in person or by online donations. 

If you were wondering whether to visit Sri Lanka, here is another reason! More updates to come.

This wild elephant swims across the lake to reach the bank so she can spoil herself with mango treats given by the bystanders. Not entirely sure whether its a good habit, but hey!

What is so fascinating about sapphires

As most of you have probably seen, we recently had some small unheated sapphires in many colors coming to online store. Amongst them was this unusual violetish grey sapphire. I don’t believe many of you have even heard of grey colored sapphires. They are quite rare and unknown to many. Grey is also considered an ‘undesirable’ color when it comes to sapphires. Therefore, there prices are relatively low due to lower demand.

What is so fascinating about sapphires is beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A stone that would be undesirable to one may be the most desirable to another.

Regardless of perceived value, I found this to be quite an interesting piece. Unlike stronger colored sapphires, this one tend to reflect  all the pretty colors that fall on it. So if you are wearing blue and green, its facets reflect those colors. 

One of my close friends who saw this stone, fell in love with it straight away. She says it’ll go beautifully with her mum’s silver hair and that it’ll be a fabulous Christmas gift mum and her can share. What a thoughtful way to celebrate Christmas. 

Many more small blue, yellow, pink and purple sapphires in store for you to pick a precious gift for your favorite. May be you will get to share the prezzie too?

Ladies, its pink season!

With Christmas just around the corner and Spring in Oceania, ladies its pink season! Isn’t this the best time of the year with lots family time with your favourites and holidays lining up?  

We recently visited South Australia and happened to drive past Lake Bumbumga in the outback. It was gleaming in pink with white salt banks. Bear in mind sea is no where to be seen and the lake is surrounded by beautiful wheat farms. If you are planning on visiting Australia, you must pay a visit to this place; it was the most magical experience. I believe pink water is due to an algae that grows in that particular mix of salty water. 

To make this holiday season even more exciting, we recently had new unheated pink sapphires coming to store. In general, pink sapphires look best under incandescent light, but photos on the website are under natural daylight to give you a more accurate idea of the color during the day. Almost all of them are very rich in color. What will you be asking santa this Christmas? Perhaps a pink sapphire that will hold lasting memories? 

How do sapphires get their color?

I had a few customers enquiring about sapphire colors and the difference between ruby and sapphire. Well, I do not intend to be too technical here, but it is exciting to know a little more about these beautiful natural sapphires. I’ll try to be as clear and concise as possible. 

Firstly, sapphire and ruby both belong to the the family of corundum, which comes in all colors. All colors except red are referred to as sapphire.

Corundum in its purest state is aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃), which is a colorless sapphire. Additional elements or impurities combined with these base elements gives the breathtaking sapphire colors. 

Combination of titanium and iron makes a blue sapphire. Chromium impurities make a ruby red - various shades of pink to red are based on the amount of chromium. Existence of chromium with other elements of a blue sapphire makes a purple sapphire. Yellow sapphires are a bit more complicated. They have a few different ways of getting their color. Majority are colored by the existence of iron (I won’t discuss other methods here as it involves a lot more chemistry). Iron is also responsible for green sapphires; due to rarity green sapphires are virtually unheard of. 

As you can see iron is responsible for blue, yellow and green colors. Majority of Australian blue sapphires tend to have more of a greenish secondary hue mainly due to higher quantities of iron. 

Other than the color, all other properties such as hardness and toughness remains the same across all sapphire colors. 

We are also working on updating the website with a more descriptive content around sapphire colors. Until then hope you enjoy reading. 

Fascinated to know the internals of your sapphire?

A very quick way to see the internal features of your sapphire is to immerse it in a glass of water. You will see most of the inclusions, colour zoning and colour banding.

You’ll be surprised to find out that your sapphire doesn’t have colour whole throughout its body. Most likely it will have color concentrated closer to the culet of the stone and/or closer to the sides of the stone. 

It is very rare, specially for a blue sapphire to have colour throughout the whole body of the stone. It is the talent of the cutter to bring the best out of this incredible natural beauty. If the colour is concentrated into one corner of the rough stone, amongst other things, cutter will almost always try to put that concentrated colour patch on the culet of the stone or to the centre. If you have a few colour patches, cutter will try to cut the stone so the colour patches are positioned around the edge. This way once the sapphire is cut, you will see the whole stone as one beautiful colour. 

What is cornflower blue?

Image courtesy of Patou / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Cornflower (image to the right) is a strong light to medium blue flower with a slight violetish tone. Due its beauty its used as a reference point when describing other objects including sapphires.

As you can imagine it is very difficult to define a colour of a natural sapphire by comparing it to a colour of a natural flower. There is no definite mix of colours and cornflowers themselves have slight variations of colour amongst them. Without a doubt colour of a sapphire should be described by its hue, saturation and tone. 

Ceylon sapphires are most famous for their lighter blue colours, and many are close to “cornflower blue”. In the world of sapphires “cornflower blue” is a prestige term and is a highly priced colour. Hence, you see the misuse of this term with some even referring to darker blue sapphires as “cornflower blue”.  

You should always appreciate and love what you see and not the terms used to describe them. In saying that, these terms are still commonly used. If you ever wondered what cornflower blue is, it is more or less a strong light to medium blue with a slight hint of violet.