Coloured Stones
Choosing a coloured stone is growing in popularity, the vast array of tones and shades available allows the customer to create a truly unique piece and one that can express their individual style and personality. Below is a hand picked directory of some of our favourite coloured stones and their notable properties.
Sapphire
Although known primarily for their inky blue tones, Sapphires come in variety of different colours from green to yellow, peach, pink and purple all with a wide range of tones in between.
Sapphires are part of the corundum family along with rubies. There structural quality makes them very hard wearing and durable stone.
Tourmaline
Tourmaline is a crystalline silicone mineral, it combines boron with elements like iron, potassium, aluminium and magnesium to create an array of different colours. From pink, to green and yellow and blue, there’s is a tourmaline to suit everyone.
The most valuable tourmaline due to its rarity is the Pariba Tourmaline, which was discovered in Brazil in the 1980’s. Its bright, electric blue colour is due to the composition of copper and boron.
Emerald
Emeralds are known for their beautiful rich green colour, they are part of the Beryl mineral family alongside aquamarine and morganite. Emeralds are a relatively soft stone, due to material often being trapped within the stone during their formation.
Due to their crystalline structure, Emeralds are often rectangular with a step cut, this cut is now called an Emerald cut.
Emeralds are the birthstone of May and are also used to symbolise 25th and 30th Wedding Anniversary.
Ruby
Rubies are the birthstone of July and are often gifted to celebrate a 40th wedding anniversary. Ruby is part of the corundum mineral family alongside sapphire. It is the presence of chromium that gives rubies their intense red colour.
The most notable rubies are formed in marble in places like the Himalayas and North Vietnam. These marble formed rubies can often fluoresce, due to these strong colour as a result of a lack of iron in its formation.