Precious Gemstones

Sapphire is a gemstone variety of the mineral corundum, an aluminium oxide (α-Al2O3). Trace amounts of other elements such as iron, titanium, chromium, copper or magnesium can give corundum blue, yellow, pink, purple, orange or greenish color. Chromium impurities in corundum yield a red tint, and the resultant gemstone is called a ruby.

Color in gemstones breaks down into three components: hue, saturation, and tone. Hue is most commonly understood as the "color" of the gemstone. Saturation refers to the vividness or brightness or "colorfulness" of the color, and tone is the lightness to darkness of the color. Blue sapphire exists in various mixtures of its primary (blue) and secondary hues, various tonal levels (shades) and at various levels of saturation (vividness).

This Yellow Sapphire Gemstone in the A Grade Displays a Light to Medium Yellow Color, is Eye Clean with Excellent Brilliance, a Good Cut, Polish.

Sapphires also occur in shades of orange and brown, and colorless sapphires are sometimes used as diamond substitutes in jewelry. Padparadscha sapphires often draw higher prices than many of even the finest blue sapphires. Recently, more sapphires of this color have appeared on the market as a result of a new artificial treatment method that is called 'lattice diffusion'

A ruby is a pink to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum (aluminium oxide). The red color is caused mainly by the presence of the element chromium. Its name comes from ruber, Latin for red. The ruby is considered one of the four precious stones, together with the sapphire, the emerald, and the diamond.

Emerald refers to the green variety of beryl. There are however, gem quality green beryls which are not emeralds. All emeralds contain inclusions, which are evidence as to the genuineness of the stone. The name is derived from the Greek word Smaragdos, meaning "green stone". Emerald is the birthstone of the month of May.

The name diamond is derived from the ancient Greek αδάμας (adámas), "proper", "unalterable", "unbreakable", "untamed", from ἀ- (a-), "un-" + δαμάω (damáō), "I overpower", "I tame".

Diamonds are thought to have been first recognized and mined in India, where significant alluvial deposits of the stone could be found many centuries ago along the rivers Penner, Krishna and Godavari. Diamonds have been known in India for at least 3,000 years but most likely 6,000 years.

The normal range of colors in diamonds run from colorless to slightly yellow or brown. "Fancy colors" are those colors outside the normal range, and are found in all colors. The most sought after are colorless, and the more intense "fancy colors", blue, pink and red. Red diamonds are among the rarest of all gemstones, only two are known to exist.

Pearls are characterized by their translucence and lustre and by a delicate play of surface colour called orient. The more perfect its shape (spherical or droplike) and the deeper its lustre, the greater its value. Only those pearls produced by mollusks whose shells are lined with mother-of-pearl (e.g., certain species of both saltwater oysters and freshwater clams) are really fine pearls; pearls from other mollusks are reddish or whitish, porcellaneous, or lacking in pearly lustre. Jewelers commonly refer to saltwater pearls as Oriental pearls and to those produced by freshwater mollusks as freshwater pearls.

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cat’s-eye,  any of several gemstones that, when cut en cabochon (in convex form, highly polished), display a luminous band reminiscent of the eye of a cat; this particular quality is termed chatoyancy. Precious, or oriental, cat’s-eye, the rarest and most highly prized, is a greenish chatoyant variety of chrysoberyl called cymophane; the chatoyant effect is due to minute parallel cavities. Quartz cat’s-eye, the commonest, owes its chatoyancy and grayish-green or greenish colour to parallel fibres of asbestos in the quartz; although it comes from the East, it is often called occidental cat’s-eye to differentiate it from the more valuable oriental (chrysoberyl) cat’s-eye. The two may be distinguished by their specific gravities; chrysoberyl is much denser. Crocidolite cat’s-eye (African cat’s-eye), more commonly known as tigereye (or tiger’s-eye), is quartz that contains oriented fibres of crocidolite that have been replaced by silica. Corundum cat’s-eye is an imperfect star sapphire or ruby in which the star is reduced to a luminous zone.

Tanzanite is a relatively new gemstone, discovered in 1967.  It is said that Masai tribesmen walking through the plains of Tanzania came across a stone that was seen to be hit with lightning.  This mineral was Zoisite and the mineral was a beautiful deep blue with a tinge of purple surrounding the center.  This new mineral was later named Tanzanite with the help of Tiffany’s and Co. and from this point on became a favorite of the jewelry marketplace.