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!