Hi Again, a lot of people were asking about the color of Emeralds from different locations. The following was from an earlier blog post and covers a lot of that territory.  I would like to add as a preface to what follows that many great stones have come from locations that are not well thought of in general.  Good stones can come from many mines.  This is true of Emerald but also of Tourmaline, Sapphire, Ruby and so forth.  While generalizations are possible, specific stones can go against the generalizations and be truly wonderful or simply different.  Hope you enjoy the additional discussion…..JR

Gems At Large® Blog May 2012 John and Laura Ramsey

Emerald— the May birthstone

by John Ramsey for Gems At Large®

What is emerald—emerald is a variety of the mineral beryl. Emerald is vibrant green variety of beryl usually colored by Chromium.  In other colors beryl has other names. The blue color for beryl is aquamarine. Pink and peach beryl is Morganite. Yellow and golden beryl is heliodor. Red beryl is Bixbite and so far has only been found in Utah. Colorless beryl is called Goshenite. Chemically, beryl is a Beryllium-Aluminum Silicate. As mentioned emerald gets its green color from Chromium. There has been an addition to “emerald” of green gems colored by Vanadium but the classic emerald look comes from Chromium rich beryl. Interestingly, the red in ruby is caused by Chromium as well. Emerald is a type 3 gemstone according to GIA terminology and therefore can be expected to have eye visible inclusions.

Where emerald comes from—a fair question that people ask is “where do emeralds come from.”   In a later paragraph we will show you a lot of the countries of the world where emeralds have been found from time to time. However, the real question people have has to do with current production in commercial quantities. Right now South America seems to be the production king of emeralds. Colombia is now known as the source for the most coveted emeralds. The color of the best Colombian emeralds and the fine transparency of the crystals from Colombia make them the quality king. What is it about the color of Colombian emeralds that people love? Well, first we have to talk about the color green. Green is a secondary color. Secondary colors are made from primary colors. In the case of green the primary colors are blue and yellow. Green can tip towards more blue or more yellow. Grass green, for instance, has more yellow in it when compared with the more bluish green of a fir tree. In the case of Colombian emeralds, the slightly bluish green tends to be very pure and not complicated by any over-tones of other colors—blue + yellow + no additional overtones = a very beautiful Colombian emerald green. That being said even within the production of Colombian emeralds there are color and quality differences. From Chivor the emeralds are slightly more bluish green and from Muzo the emeralds are slightly more yellowish green. But taken as a whole Colombian emerald is slightly more bluish than emerald from Russia. Prior to the ascendency of Colombian emeralds to the pinnacle of desirability Russian stones were considered the best. There may be some debate over this issue still. That debate would occur primarily in Europe.

For the first 15 years or so of my career in gems Brazil was known for producing emeralds in the state of Bahia—generally very poor quality emeralds. Then in the 1980’s there were two discoveries of emerald in Brazil: Santa Terezinha, Goais and Nova Era, Minas Gerais. Interestingly both of these discoveries produced emeralds of startling beauty. Some of the best stones of Nova Era rivaled gems from Colombia—maybe not the finest from Colombia—but Nova Era gems can be beautiful. Santa Terezinha emeralds have distinctly more yellow than Colombian stones but have a uniquely undeniable beauty.

But let’s not leave out African gems. Zambia has produced lots and lots of large attractive gems. Usually in my experience though the Zambian stones have a color that is marred by overtones of gray. But the Zambian stones can be large and relatively clean and truly lovely in the better quality.

Well–Sapphire is not alone in having a cushion cut gem set records. On January 27th we wrote about the record setting cushion cut Ceylon Sapphire of just under 300 carats. This past November 12th a cushion cut ruby set a record price for a ruby. The ruby in question is known as the Graff Ruby. It sold for over $8.6 million USD. It was sold by the jeweler Graff to a collector who later put it up for sale. Graff bought the stone back again at auction saying more or less that it is the best ruby on the planet. So buying it made sense. This story brings up a great point. Truly great gems are rare and from the standpoint of fine colored gems this is abundantly clear. There is a truly magnificent star ruby in the collection at the L.A. County Museum of Natural History. Years ago a Southern California person of wealth put out a call to find one that fit the same description. From what I know she was got skunked. Hmmm. Fine color is indeed hard to find. At times impossible. What I know after all these years is that I’ve really only regretted two things with regards to merchandise: 1. Selling items that are irreplaceable and 2. Not buying items that later proved to be irreplaceable. Were there ever real regrets on purchases—not really. It is always the elusive nature of fine gems that makes a person say “I wish I’d kept that piece” or “I should have bought that darn piece”—“doggone it, I let it get away!!!”
Back to the Graff Ruby—the stone by comparison to the earlier mentioned Sapphire is quite small. Rubies are smaller. At 8.62 carats the Graff Ruby is in fact mounted in a ring and quite wearable—hope those prongs hold!!! The gems in the picture are cushion cut ruby to give you an idea of what a cushion cut ruby looks like. The actual Graff stone has sides that do not bow quite as much.

Amethyst is different than many other gems. Why? Because amethyst is beautiful in many of its colors—high grade and lesser grade. Many gems in their less expensive colors are not very attractive—beer bottle green tourmaline, straw yellow diamonds, overly dark greenish blue sapphire, grayish-purple rubies. And the list goes on.

Amethyst is different in that many of the more affordable colors are quite attractive.

The darker more expensive color of amethyst is wonderful as you can see in the photo but the lighter more affordable color is quite attractive as well—it’s all good!

The difference in price can be quite astounding. Based just on color (not counting size, clarity, or cut) the price difference can be as much as 2,000%. I am speaking of the at the source price—not retail which can vary for other reasons.

There are still a lot of people who are surprised that garnets might come in color other than red. We’ve done our best to spread the word and have developed a lot of fans who love the varied colors available in the garnet family. The piece in the photo is a priceless mineral specimen of a Demantoid garnet. Demantoid garnet was discovered originally in Russia where some of the gems are still found. The Russian stones tend to be a very nice green similar to the color of certain Tsavorite garnets found in East Africa. Tsavorite is a color variety of grossularite garnet and the name is somewhat a marketing name.

The photo of the mineral specimen shows very nicely what a garnet crystal looks like if well-formed and not damaged while waiting in the ground for a lucky miner. The mineral specimen shown is from the Ala Valley in Italy and was the premier piece found there, The entire specimen is about 2.5 inches high and remarkable for the fact that the crystals are so perfect and nicely polished by nature. As well the piece is amazing for the fact that the garnets sit on their original matrix in which they were formed.