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. 

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. 

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?