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? 

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. 

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.