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.