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. 

Unheated sapphire care and cleaning guide

SUITABLE FOR DAILY WEAR

Corundum (gem material of sapphire and ruby) is the second hardest gem material in the world, second only to diamond, which means sapphire can only be scratched by another sapphire or a diamond. This also means that unlike many other coloured gemstones such as tanzanite, contact with dust (which contains high quantities of silica) will not scratch a sapphire. 

Corundum also has excellent toughness and no cleavage (tougher than diamond). This means that sapphires are not prone to chipping, cracking, or breaking.

Unheated sapphire is also stable under normal wearing conditions such as heat, light, and common chemicals. However, even mild acids like lemon juice can damage fracture-filled and some treated sapphire.

These qualities make natural unheated sapphire a highly durable gemstone suitable for daily wear. 

CLEANING

Easiest and safest way to clean sapphire is to wash it in warm soapy water and wipe it with a gem cleaning cloth. Ultrasonic and steam cleaners are usually safe for untreated sapphires, but you do not need to use chemicals to clean your stone. Due to its hardness sapphire can take a high quality polish and therefore washing in soapy water is more than enough.

STORING SAPPHIRE JEWELLERY

In general, when storing loose gemstones or jewellery, take a good care not to let them touch one another and that each piece is stored separately. As a hard gem material, sapphire can scratch softer gemstones, other sapphires or precious metal such as gold or platinum. And as diamonds are harder than sapphires, it can scratch sapphires. 

This article has been reposted from Deliqa Gems (Copyright 2013 Deliqa Gems) Hope this helps you to look after your precious unheated sapphire. 

Time for transparency?

Recently I had a discussion with a gemmologist who is also a gem supplier and predominantly supplies heat treated sapphires to the Australian market. I’ll try not give you clues of who this person is. 

He/ She says that when he/ she sells a heat treated sapphire to a customer he/ she does not disclose that the stone has been heated unless the customer enquires. His/ Her argument is that as no external elements have been added in the process of heat treatment, the stone is 100% natural and that they have simply sped up the heating process that would have otherwise occurred naturally under the Earth’s surface. He/ She proceeds to say that Australian customers do not tend to query whether the sapphire has been treated, but international customers such as in Europe and US do query this often. 

I believe this has more to do with lack of customer awareness here in Australia, whereas European and US customers are a lot more educated about gemstone enhancements. 

I feel this is a bias opinion from a seller who supplies heated sapphires. Whilst I appreciate that heat treatment has assisted vastly to maintain reasonable prices by increasing sapphire supply in the market, it is still an enhancement to the natural stone. There is no guarantee that a heated sapphire would have the same performance if it was left underground for many thousand years more. One of the greatest fascination of gemstones is their rarity. Evidently fine quality unheated sapphires are rarer than enhanced sapphires. 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Customers need to be aware of what they are purchasing. 

In my opinion, if the seller is aware of any kind of enhancement to the gemstone it should be disclosed regardless. The customer can then proceed to ask more questions. This would be a great opportunity for the seller to educate the customer about the difference between traditional heat treatment and other treatment methods. 

We used to deal with heated sapphires ourselves, but we disclosed all information we were aware of. I think it is important to disclose known enhancements of a gemstone and educate customers in order to maintain a trustworthy industry. 

This is such a dividing topic, your opinion is greatly appreciated. 

Romance of Padparadscha Sapphire

We call it Padmaraga in Sri Lanka, but its more commonly known as Padparadscha sapphire. The name Padmaraga is derived from Sanskrit, meaning lotus (Padma) colour (Raga), signifying the vibrant mix of pink and orange tones reflected by the stone. There’s also another variety of sapphires known as Pushparaga in Sri Lanka. The Pushparaga sapphire is a mix of pink and yellow tones. Pushparaga sapphires also attract a premium price in Sri Lanka, but are less widely known around the world. We believe the word Padparadscha derived from the combination of words Padmaraga and Pushparaga. 

Padparadscha is the rarest of all sapphires. The finest quality Padparadscha sapphire can fetch up to $30,000 per carat, even for a one carat sapphire. It is such a delicate mix of colour and hence the price greatly depends on the buyer’s taste, affordability and the seller’s willingness to sell. Padparadscha sapphire was originally found in Sri Lanka hundreds of years ago. Although in recent years similar colour sapphires have been found elsewhere in the world, many experts in the industry maintain the view that only those found in Sri Lanka should be called Padparadscha and those found elsewhere in the world should rather be called Pinkish Orange or Orangish Pink than giving the romantic term Padparadscha. 

In the Sri Lankan gem market Padparadscha sapphire tones varies from the colour of a lotus, which is more pink than orange and the colour of the sunset, which is more orange than pink. How do you define the colour of the sunset or the colour of a lotus? There is no definition in terms of how much of each tone makes the mix of this enchanting Padparadscha sapphire. We think its this mysteriousness what makes Padparadscha even more romantic and intriguing, and it is left up to the bearer to decide what tone attracts him or her the most. 

These mysterious Padparadscha sapphires are extremely rare in nature. We have seen many sellers who claim to sell untreated sapphires yet still sell treated Padparadscha sapphires. These treated sapphires could be heat treated, diffusion treated, dyed, oiled or irradiated to obtain the colour. The price of treated Padparadscha and untreated Padparadscha varies significantly. 

In terms of the clarity of a Padparadscha sapphire, it is highly desirable to be eye clean as even the slightest inclusion can be highly visible unlike in other sapphires, but of course the price will reflect this. It is also wise to bear in mind that it is those inclusions that can tell us whether a sapphire has been heat treated or not as many of those inclusions melt away or change their form once a sapphire has been heat treated. 

During our recent visit to Sri Lanka, we came across this stunning Padparadscha (or Padmaraga as we like to call it). It is of great clarity other than a fingerprint inclusion closer to the girdle (edge) of the sapphire visible at close inspection. It has a beautiful mix of pastel pink and orange tones. Its pastel colour and great cut have give this Padparadscha a fabulous lustre. 

Due to its rarity, many gem suppliers have never even seen a Padparadscha sapphire in real life. We feel lucky to have one of the rarest of all, an untreated, unheated Padparadscha from Sri Lanka at Deliqa collection. 

The romance of these mysterious Padparadscha sapphires will continue to impress many around the world. 

How it becomes an eye catching sparkle

This time I visited the lapidary in Sri Lanka I remembered to take some photographs. In fact, I took a video tape but it appears to be corrupted. I will try to have this fixed.  So, here is how a rough crystal is turned in to a beautiful sparkly gemstone.

Step 1 - Preforming the gemstone crystal - At this step cutter decides what shape the gemstone will be cut. Pictured is a cutter preforming a natural garnet. He is holding the stone by hand against the wheel. The wheel is spinning in water to avoid heat build up. You can also see some garnet crystals on the table.

Step 2 - Faceting a preformed gem - Once the stone has been preformed to its shape, cutter then facet the gemstone. In above picture, a cutter is faceting a natural sapphire. Fine diamond dust has been rubbed on the spinning plate. Water drips on to the plate to avoid heat build up.

Step 3 - Polishing the faceted gemstone - Last but not least the faceted gemstone is polished to obtain the beautiful lustre. Pictured is a cutter polishing a pink sapphire. Sapphires are polished on a copper plate with extremely fine diamond dust.

And.....here comes the beautifully faceted gemstone!

I hope you find this process is as fascinating as I think it is.

Second largest gemstone market in Sri Lanka

Two weeks ago I suddenly decided to visit Sri Lanka to surprise my friend at her wedding and to meet my first niece for the first time. Initially I thought that I will have to miss the wedding due to other commitments here in Melbourne and that I will visit to see my niece a little later, but as the wedding approached it broke my heart not to be there at my best friend’s wedding. So I flew! 

During this short visit I managed to visit the second largest gemstone market in Sri Lanka. Its in Beruwala close to my home town. This time I took a brief video clip so you can see what it is like over there. To protect the privacy of the buyers and sellers I wasn’t comfortable in recording a longer clip, but I hope this short clip will give you an idea. This visit to the market wasn’t intended for us to purchase gemstones, but to give you an insight to the gemstone market culture in Sri Lanka.

As you will see all merchants and buyers just deal on the street. Market has sections such as Indian quality (low quality stones), rough sapphires, cut and polished sapphires, semi-precious gemstones and so on. 

A seller showing us a parcel of loose sapphires

As soon as we arrived at the market sellers started showing us gemstones they have. Now that we were there, our guide took us to his office on the roadside to look at stones more closely. This market not only has Ceylon sapphires but also Madagascan sapphires. If you appear to have a good understanding of the trade sellers are honest enough to say where the stone comes from. Within an hour or so we looked at over 2,000 gemstones including sapphire, chrysoberyl, spinel, star sapphire and garnet. Most of the stones at the market are treated or low quality stones. They are low clarity, but mostly badly cut in order to retain carat weight. Some sellers prepare sapphire parcels up to 1000 carats and try to sell it at a low per carat price. These parcels may have treated, unheated and even synthetic and glass stones. The truth is you will only find less than handful of quality stones within these parcels and sometimes not even, so its a huge gamble. Indian buyers take the advantage of these parcels as in India there is a huge market even for low quality sapphires. Most of the yellow sapphires and low quality sapphires are bought by Indian buyers. I have to say that some of the most expensive sapphires are also bought buy Indian buyers.

Even after looking at over 2,000 gemstones we only came across less than hundred unheated natural sapphires. Out of these I only shortlisted less than ten natural sapphires and ended up buying only two small sapphires. This clearly shows the rarity of finest unheated natural sapphire. After looking at this many gemstones within an hour or so I had a severe headache, which was tiring me out. As you get tired sellers show you more an more stones hoping that you will just buy them without inspecting them closely. Hunting for stones at the market really isn’t an easy job. 

Multi million dollar gemstones change hands here. A lot of the transactions are settled based on trust, but it is very easy even for an experienced buyer to get caught in a fraudulent transaction. You have to be very careful if purchasing a stone here. None are certified. You will find all sorts of stones including synthetic and even glass. 

As you can see this gemstone market is highly male dominated. In fact, apart from myself I didn’t see any ladies at the market that day!

Latest addition to my sapphire jewellery collection

Collected this precious little thing from the jeweller this afternoon. Perfect! Just the way I expected; great work of art by a jeweller in Melbourne, Australia. The whole process of designing and having a custom-made jewellery was very exciting; it is definitely much more precious than buying a pre-set jewellery because I got the chance to connect with my sapphire.

Centre stone is a 3.07 carat unheated natural blue sapphire from Sri Lanka.  Blue is one of my favourite colours amongst all sapphires (you are probably thinking ‘mine too!’). It is such a pleasant sapphire that will add elegance to an outfit with no effort.

Although we have many blue sapphires in store I fell in love with this one for myself. This is something I always say to my clients too; you need to pick the one that you fall in love with, the one that you connect with the most. Sometimes it’s like the love at first sight and other times it takes a little longer to fall in love with the perfect one for you. 

Either way once you find the right one for yourself, you will be delighted to watch it twinkles all day long. 

New sapphires

Most of you may have already seen that lots of new sapphires from Sri Lanka are now in store, just in time for mother’s day. If you haven’t already, you still have just enough time to order online and receive it by Friday. Mum will be very happy to have something natural that lasts a lifetime and more.

It is always very exciting when we get new sapphires. All our sapphires are unheated natural sapphires. Unheated natural sapphires are rare, unlike treated sapphires; it took us a very long time to collect these precious stones. Some were cut at the mines itself (most we re-cut) and some we got the rough stone and cut in our lapidary under instructions of my father, who is an award winning cutter.

I tell you what, photographing sapphires isn’t the easiest thing. Specially when they are cut so well the twinkle of the facets makes it very difficult to photograph; some facets appear black whilst others appear white. We still have a lot of fun photographing, never a dull moment.

4.11 ct unheated natural yellow sapphire

Amongst the new stones was this stunning unheated vivid yellow sapphire. Beautifully faceted. It is about 1mm deeper than usual cutting standards in comparison to the width, but this has done a great job in intensifying the colour. Lustre is fabulous. This sapphire will make a ring or a pendant that truly stand out. Yellow sapphires in this colour are usually beryllium treated (a chemical that is used when heating sapphires under extreme temperatures to obtain a golden yellow colour), so it is very rare to find an unheated natural sapphire in this colour. You will see that some suppliers who claim to supply only unheated natural sapphires, still supply treated yellow sapphires stating that it is difficult to find unheated yellow sapphires.

This is a very special stone for someone who loves spring colours, undoubtedly this will add elegance to your outfit.

We also have more natural sapphires coming in soon, sign up to the ‘New sapphire alert’ to be the first one to know when they are in store.

Baby love

Isn’t she adorable? This little one’s aunty got her a fiery yellow sapphire to celebrate her birth. Its  unique, pure and radiant, just like her. Yellow sapphires are also believed to bring good luck and good health. What a wonderful thought; something that will stay with her for a life time.

Colours colours colours!!

I was going through my wardrobe this morning hoping to pick a dress to wear for catch up drinks with some of my closest friends this evening. As usual I was very indecisive. Then I thought I will be able to narrow it down by choosing the dresses that won’t go well with my beautiful medium blue sapphire necklace. It only made things harder for me. The sapphire necklace goes beautifully with all the colours in my wardrobe! It adds elegance even to a simple solid colour dress. Eventually I picked an orange dress. Hot colour contrast is a perfect match!

Do you like a good colour contrast when accessorising your dress?

Visit to Indonesia

Bebek Tepi Sawah restaurent, Bali

I recently visited a few of our clients and my close friends in beautiful Indonesia. Food was delicious and I loved the culture.

I, of course visited many jewellery shops and the Rawabening gem market, a popular gem market in Indonesia. Market was an experience itself. Not what we see in Sri Lanka; round gatherings under the trees in early mornings for a couple of hours with merchants carrying both million dollar stones and cheaper ones just in their pockets. You won't see the same merchant the following day, they vary by the day. Rawabening market is a big building and shops are open during ordinary business hours, same merchants everyday. You need to ask the merchant to bring out their best stock hidden in a safe, otherwise they won't show it to you. I got to see some beautiful gems but didn't find any natural sapphires that caught my eye, which was disappointing although I wasn't looking to buy.
 

My friend and I then went window shopping for fine jewellery. In one of the most popular jewellery shops in Jakarta, I saw this beautiful necklace with 12 matching sapphires (medium to dark blue) and a matching pair of earrings with three 1.5 carat stones in each earring. These pieces were proudly displayed in an alarmed display case and are unable inspect closely. Knowing the value of matching sapphires I was curious to know the prices. Jeweller said they are not for sale but the earrings alone are about US$5,000. She went on to say that the making of the earrings alone cost her $3,000 suggesting 6 matching sapphires of over 1.5 carat each are worth just $2,000. I was taken-back by the cheap price and was immediately concerned about the genuineness. I asked whether the stones are natural or chemically treated. She said they are natural but unaware whether they are chemically treated or not, and that they never get their stones certified. Suspicious much?
 

We hopped into about 15 more fine jewellery shops and heard the same story each time, “stones are natural but they are unaware whether the stones are chemically treated or not” (except just one store who provided only certified sapphire). Some jewellery were over $15,000. They of course tell the customer that their sapphires are ‘natural’. I find this extremely misleading and unfair for the customers who trust their jeweller to do the right thing by them. Customers think they found a bargain!  
 

Don't get me wrong, I am sure there are jewellers in Indonesia who use 100% natural sapphire, but it is disappointing that ‘non-disclosure’ still happens in the industry. When you buy a precious natural gemstone always remember to request the stone to be certified.
 

Other than this insight to the jewellery industry, we had a great time visiting Bali and enjoying some delicious food with some amazing people!

Happy 40th birthday!

Isn’t it such a wonderful thought to present your wife with a custom-made ring on her birthday? Well this gentleman made that thought a reality. He came to us looking for something special and walked out with this beautiful pink sapphire. This was the present to his wife on her 40th birthday last spring. I was lucky enough to know them personally. 

After being married for over 15 years and having two gorgeous girls, these lovebirds still know how to spice things up. Ring is made with a 2.06 carat Deliqa natural pink sapphire from Sri Lanka, surrounded by sixteen 0.10 carat diamonds in white gold. Great work of art by a custom jeweller in Mornington Peninsula, Australia.  A lot of thoughts gone into making this. 

I would love to be spoilt with a custom-made jewellery on my birthday! :) Wouldn’t you?