The Pink Star Diamond, which sold this month (November 2013) for $83 million dollars, is one of the most fabulous diamonds in the world. It is the largest fancy vivid pink internally flawless diamond in the world, and weighs in at an astonishing 59.60 carats, making the price paid almost 1,400,000 dollars per carat. It […]
Category Archives: Learn about diamonds
Articles, photos and hints & tips about diamonds and precious gemstones. This section includes articles about historic diamonds, updates from the world of gemmology, and an occasionally geeky focus on the chemistry of diamonds
The diamond is the universal symbol of love. Of all its many roles, it is as a messenger of romantic love that the diamond has resonated through the centuries to emerge today as powerful as ever. This began with the belief that Cupid’s arrows were tipped with diamonds. The word diamond is derived from the Greek […]
Amethyst is a purple coloured gemstone, the most prized member of the quartz family. It has been known of and treasured since the time of the ancient Greeks. Its wine-purple colour lead the Greeks to believe that it would protect one from drunkenness, and keep the wearer clear headed and quick-witted. According to Aristotle, amethyst […]
Tanzanite is a transparent blue gemstone that was first discovered in 1962 in Tanzania, in East Africa. It is a variety of a mineral called zoisite. Initially only small pockets were discovered, but in the late 1960s a large deposit was discovered, and large-scale mining began. Its immense and sudden popularity was almost entirely due […]
Most diamonds in the world are slightly coloured with a faint trace of yellow or brown, although they can exist in almost any colour. The amount of colour a diamond possesses has a huge impact on its value. In increasing order of rarity, yellow diamond is followed by brown, colorless, then by blue, green, black, […]
While we now understand the crystallography of diamonds, and most, if not all, of their chemical properties, this was not always true. The exact nature of diamonds was a mystery to scientists for many years; many people struggled with the “indestructible” nature of diamonds. It was widely known by the 17th century that they could […]
Citrine is a yellow to brown coloured variety of quartz. Although quartz itself is the second most abundant mineral in the Earth’s continental crust, gem quality citrine is rare and desirable, and has been used since ancient times for jewellery. Its name comes from the Latin word ‘Citrina’, meaning ‘yellow’, due to its body-colour. Citrine is one […]
Our newest arrival is this wonderful piece of micromosaic jewellery, a brooch/pendant. Micromosaics are a special form of mosaic that uses unusually small mosaic pieces of glass, or in later Italian pieces an enamel-like material, to make small images. From the Renaissance they began to be made in Italy, reaching the height of their popularity […]
When you are looking through the microscope at a gemstone, there are some many beautiful things to see. These inclusions and characteristics that you can see tell you a lot about the stone; some tell you where it formed, or if it is natural or man-made. Some tell you about the condition of the piece. […]
Following on from a previous post about sapphires, this post deals with the different colours of Blue that can be found in them. In ancient times, it was believed that the sun’s rays caused the wonderful deep blue colours that we see, and that the longer the stone was exposed to the sun, the deeper […]