ALEXANDRITE

This rare gemstone is named after the Russian tsar Alexander II (1818-1881), the very first crystals having been discovered in April 1834 in the emerald mines near the Tokovaya River in the Urals. The discovery was made on the day the future tsar came of age. Although alexandrite is a relatively young gemstone, it certainly has a noble history. Since it shows both red and green, the principal colours of old Imperial Russia, it inevitably became the national stone of tsarist Russia.

Beautiful alexandrite in top quality, however, is very rare indeed and hardly ever used in modern jewellery. In antique Russian jewellery you may come across it with a little luck, since Russian master jewellers loved this stone. TiffanyÂ’s master gemmologist George Frederick Kunz (1856-1932) was also fascinated by alexandrite, and the jewellerÂ’s firm produced some beautiful series of rings and platinum ensembles at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Smaller alexandrites were occasionally also used in Victorian jewellery from England.

The magic of changing colours

The most sensational feature about this stone, however, is its surprising ability to change its colour. Green or bluish-green in daylight, alexandrite turns a soft shade of red, purplish-red or raspberry red in incandescent light. This unique optical characteristic makes it one of the most valuable gemstones of all, especially in fine qualities..

AMETHYST

Its colour is as unique as it is seductive, though in fact this gemstone of all gemstones is said to protect its wearer against seduction. The amethyst is extravagance in violet. For many thousands of years, the most striking representative of the quartz family has been a jewel coveted by princes both ecclesiastical and secular. Moses described it as a symbol of the Spirit of God in the official robes of the High Priest of the Jews, and the Russian Empress Catherine the Great sent thousands of miners into the Urals to look for it. In popular belief, the amethyst offers protection against drunkenness - for the Greek words 'amethystos' mean 'not intoxicated' in translation. A more apt stone for the month of February, particularly if there is to be plenty going on in the way of carnival celebrations, could thus hardly be wished for.

FIRE OPAL

Fire opals are unique in the lush world of the opals. They were already admired as symbols of the most fervent love in ancient times, in India and in the ancient Persian kingdom, and among the peoples of Central America and the Amerindians. It was believed that a gem that bubbled over with vivacity to such an extent as the fire opal could only have been created in the waters of paradise. The Mayas and Aztecs loved this gemstone and liked to use it in mosaics and for ritualistic purposes. They called it quetzalitzlipyollitli, the 'stone of the bird of paradise'. Yet one day, the gemstone knowledge of Mexico's natives, which had been handed down from generation to generation, somehow sank into oblivion for a long time ...
... until, in or around the year 1835, the fiery treasures hidden in the Mexican highlands were remembered, and work was gradually begun on the systematic mining of the places where they had been found. Today, the fire opal is regarded as the national gemstone of that country.

It is in Mexico that the most significant fire opal deposits in the world lie. Rock strata containing opals run through the Mexican highlands, with their many extinct volcanoes. With a few exceptions, the gemstone, which lies hidden in cavities and crevices, is extracted in open-cast mines, the work giving rise to impressive canyons with walls up to 60 metres high and labyrinthine passages which wind their way through the mining areas.

Russian Diopside

Chrome diopside certainly won't win any contests for the most beautiful name. To most people, it sounds more like a car polish than a gemstone. But don't be misled by that! Chrome diopside has a beautiful rich green colour and an amazingly low price. In fact it is the most affordable gemstone in a pure rich green.

There are a few drawbacks. Chrome diopside is mostly available in small sizes: in the rare large sizes, the colour actually becomes so rich that it is too dark. But for bright green accent stones, chrome diopside is ideal. However, it is relatively soft, with a hardness of only 5.5, so it is a better choice for earrings or a pendant than for a ring which will receive a lot of wear. Chrome diopside is mostly mined in Yakutia and Siberia. The liberalisation of the economy of the former Soviet Union has made it more readily available than it used to be.

Aquamarine

Aquamarine--Latin for "water of the sea"--is rich in ancient lore. It was said to possess the calming effects of the sea, to aid those who travel by water, to help establish happy marriages, to protect newborn babies, to bestow insight and foresight, and to induce sleep. The aquamarine is a universal symbol of youth, hope, and health. A 243-pound aquamarine crystal, blue on the inside and green on the outside, was found in Brazil in 1920; the American Museum of Natural History in New York City has a 13-pound piece of the green outside portion. Another famous Brazilian aquamarine was given to American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt by the Brazilian government and is now in the Hyde Park Museum in New York City.

Carnelian

Carnelian is a red-orange member of the quartz family. It is known to virtually all ancient cultures in the West, Asia, Middle East, and pre-Columbian America. Carnelian has a prominent place in the jewelry and other treasures fond in King tutankhamen's tomb. Many fine carnelian ring stones carved by ancient Romans also have survived. A stone rich in legend, carnelian was said to strengthen creativity, prosperity, ambition, and curiosity; balance body energies; soften anger; and promote focusing on and achieving goals.

Citrine

Citrine, a member of the quartz family of gemstones, ranges in color from sunny yellows to a tawny golden brown. Its name is derived from the French word for lemon: citron. People once carried citrine to protect them from the plague, evil thoughts, and snake bites. In modern lore, it is said to expand consciousness and promote mental clarity. Found mainly in Brazil, citrine is a durable stone that holds up well to being worn every day.

Diamond

Diamond, the hardest gemstone, is carbon formed 50 miles or more within the earth at high temperatures and under great pressure. Its name comes from the Greek adamas, unconquerable. India was the world's first source of diamonds, which were introduced to the western world when a traveling Frenchman brought a diamond back to France in 1605. Many of the world's diamonds now come from mines in Siberia, Africa, and Australia. An enterprising Texan once "mined" diamonds from the ocean bottom with the equivalent of a huge vacuum cleaner.

Emerald

Emeralds have long been associated with Colombia, where they were mined by the Incas; some of the deposits found by the Incas are still being mined today. Ancient legend has it that emeralds make the wearer more intelligent and more honest, cure poor eyesight, and bestow the power to predict the future. Tiny crystals trapped in emerald form what is known to experts as a "garden" that can be seen only under magnification.

Garnet

Garnet is a large family of gems that are found in every color except blue. Noah is said to have hung a garnet in the ark for light, and tradition credits garnet with protecting its owner from nightmares. Garnet crystals reminded early scientists of pomegranate seeds: The name garnet comes from the Latin granatus (seedlike). Pyrope (red with a brown tint), almandine (red with a violet tint), and rhodolite (a rosy or violet red) are three varieties that have associated garnet with red. Tsavorite is a recently discovered green garnet found in Tanzania that was named by Tiffany and Company for Tsavo Park in neighboring Kenya. Protect garnets from scratches, blows, and extremes of heat and cold--and don't use an ultrasonic cleaner.

Rhodolite Garnet

Garnets are found in all colors except blue. The rhodolite garnet is red, named when stones the color of rhododendron flowers were discovered in 1898 on the east coast of the United States, in North Carolina. East Africa and Sri Lanka are now the principal sources of rhodolite garnet. Garnet is rich in associations from ancient times, when it was thought to protect its owner from nightmares and from poison. In Christian tradition, the blood-red garnet is symbolic of Christ's sacrifice; in the Muslim Koran, garnet illuminates the Fourth Heaven.

Jade

Jade is a collective name for two minerals, jadeite and nephrite. Prehistoric peoples made tools and weapons out of nephrite, which is very tough. Jadeite is more common for jewelry. The last empress of China so loved jade that she turned away a visitor offering a fabulous diamond tiara but welcomed one who brought a small jade object. A traditional symbol of the five cardinal virtues of charity, modesty, courage, justice, and wisdom, jade occurs in many colors, but the most sought-after is imperial jade, an emerald green translucent jadeite from Burma. Protect jade from cosmetics and household chemicals, including jewelry cleaners--and don't use an ultrasonic cleaner.

Jasper

Jasper is a member of the quartz family that contains significant amounts of other materials. These materials give jasper its patterns and colors (reds, pinks, greens, and browns), and it is often named informally for its color or for the place where it is found. Two varieties from Idaho are Bruneau jasper--earthy tones from the Bruneau River canyon--and Willow Creek jasper, usually a rosy pink. Engraved jasper rings found at Pompeii and Herculaneum demonstrate that the ancient Romans, too, adorned themselves with jasper.

Moonstone

Moonstone is a feldspar that gets its milky sheen from refraction of light by its thin internal layers. It is found in Sri Lanka, Burma, Madagascar, Australia, Brazil, India, Tanzania, and the United States.

Opal

The ancient Arabs believed that opal fell to the earth in a flash of lightning, but in fact opals get their mysterious iridescence from light striking an internal structure of microscopic spheres. White opal is a light, delicate color; black opal is dark blue, black, or green, with vivid flashes of intense colors. The Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon, owned an opal called "The Burning of Troy"; Queen Victoria gave each of her five daughters a magnificent opal. Australia is the primary source of the world's opal. Protect your opal from scratches, blows, and chemicals, including jewelry cleaners.

Peridot

Believe it or not, the fabled emeralds of Queen Cleopatra may really have been peridots mined on a Red Sea island off the coast of Egypt. Indeed, many emerald afficionados of antiquity may also have been peridot lovers without knowing it. Peridot is the August birthstone.

Topaz

The powers once ascribed to topaz are as varied as the colors of the gem (yellow, pink, green, blue, brown, red): Topaz was said to drive away sadness, strengthen the intellect, bestow courage, dispel enchantment, cure asthma and other ills, confer cheerfulness, cool tempers, prevent bad dreams, relieve insomnia, ward off sudden death, change color in the presence of poison, and make the wearer invisible in times of emergency. A 15th-century physician is said to have cured plague victims by touching them with topaz once owned by Popes Clement VI and Gregory II. Protect topaz from scratches, blows, and extremes of heat and cold--and don't use an ultrasonic cleaner.

Tourmaline

Before tourmaline was identified in the late 18th century, it was mistaken for emerald, topaz, sapphire, and other stones. Not only is it found in a variety of vibrant colors, including green (chrome tourmaline), blue (indicolite) and red, a single stone may show two or more colors. A remarkable multicolored stone called watermelon tourmaline--a pink and white center surrounded by a green rim--is often cut in slabs. California and Maine produce a lot of tourmaline, which stands up well to wear but should not be cleaned in an ultrasonic cleaner.

Tsavorite

Tsavorite is a newcomer to the gem kingdom, discovered during the late 1960s in East Africa, still its only known source. a member of the garnet family, this emerald look-alike was dubbed "tsavorite" (after the Tsavo Park in Kenya) by Tiffany's for the stones first national promotion in 1971. It is the birthstone for January

Zircon

Hindu poets tell of the Kalpa Tree, the ultimate gift to the gods, a glowing tree covered in gemstone fruit with leaves of zircon. Zircon has long played a supporting role to more well-known gemstones, often stepping in as an understudy when they were unavailable.

In the middle ages, zircon was said to aid sleep, bring prosperity, and promote honour and wisdom in its owner. The name probably comes from the Persian word 'zargun', which means 'gold-coloured', although zircon comes in a wide range of different colours.

Natural zircon today suffers on account of the similarity of its name to cubic zirconia, the laboratory-grown diamond imitation. Many people are unaware that there is a beautiful natural gemstone called zircon.

Zircon occurs in a wide range of colours, but for many years the most popular was the colourless variety, which looks more like diamond than any other natural stone because of its brilliance and dispersion.

Today the most popular colour is blue zircon, which is considered an alternative birthstone for December. Most blue zircon is of a pastel blue, but some exceptional gems have a bright blue colour. Zircon is also available in green, dark red, yellow, brown, and orange.

Zircon is mined in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Australia, and other countries.

Zircon is one of the heaviest gemstones, which means that it will look smaller than other varieties of the same weight. Zircon jewellery should be stored carefully because although it is relatively hard, zircon can suffer from abrasion and the facets can be chipped. Dealers often wrap zircons in individual twists of paper so that they will not knock against each other in a parcel.

The wide variety of colours of zircon, its rarity, and its relatively low cost make it a popular collector's stone. Collectors enjoy the search for all possible colours and variations.

Tanzanite

Tanzanite is an extraordinary gemstone. It occurs in only one place worldwide. Its blue, surrounded by a fine hint of purple, is a wonderful colour. Thanks to its unusual aura and the help of the New York jeweller's Tiffany, it has rapidly become one of the most coveted gemstones in the world.

It is named after the East African state of Tanzania, the only place in the world where it has been found. Africa? Does anyone think of gemstones when they hear that name? Well they should, because Africa is a continent which provides the world with a multitude of truly magnificent gemstones, like tanzanite for example. On its discovery in 1967, it was enthusiastically celebrated by the specialists as the 'gemstone of the 20th century'. They held their breath in excitement as they caught sight of the first deep-blue crystals which had been found in the Merelani Hills near Arusha in the north of Tanzania. Millions of years ago, metamorphic schists, gneisses and quartzites formed impressive, flat-topped inselbergs on a vast plain in the shadow of Kilimanjaro. The precious crystals grew in deposits on the inside of these unusual elevations. For a long, long time they were hidden from the eye of Man, until one day some passing Masai shepherds noticed some sparkling crystals lying in the sun and took them along with them.

In Merelani today, the search is carried on for the coveted crystals in several, smallish mines, in some cases using modern methods. As a rule, only small grains are found, but now and again the mineworkers succeed in fetching out a larger crystal – to the joy of the mine owners and that of the large number of tanzanite fans.

The tanzanite trade is in the hands of many licensed merchants, mostly on a small scale, who have, over the decades, built up stable, trusting business relationships with gemstone companies in India, Germany, Israel and the USA. An estimated 90 per cent of all tanzanite merchants are official members of the International Colored Gemstone Association ICA, and are thus bound by the high ethical standards of that organisation. In this way, this exclusive gemstone is not subject to trade via dubious channels, but instead, in spite of its rarity, passed on along reputable trade routes to established cutting-centres and subsequently to major jewellers all round the world.

Really just a blue zoisite ...

Tanzanite is a blue variety of the gemstone zoisite. It consists of calcium aluminium silicate and is not particularly hard, having a value of 6.5 to 7 on the Mohs scale. For that reason, it should always be worn carefully and never placed in an ultrasonic bath for cleaning or brought into contact with acids.

When the first tanzanites were offered to the New York jewellery company Tiffany a short time after their discovery, they sparked an enthusiastic reaction. 'This gemstone is a sensation!', they said. However, they did make a recommendation to give the 'child' another name, since the gemmologically correct name 'blue zoisite' was felt to be too close to the English word 'suicide'. So Tiffany's proposed the name 'tanzanite', after the place where the stone had been found - a name which quickly came into general use in the trade. And it was Tiffany's who, two years after its discovery, presented the exclusive gemstone to the general public with a broad-based advertising campaign.

... but what a fantastic colour!

The deep blue of the tanzanite is fantastic, and runs from ultramarine blue to light violet-blue. The most coveted colour is a blue surrounded by a delicate hint of purple, which has a particularly wonderful effect in sizes of over 10 carats. The well developed polychromaticity of the tanzanite is typical: depending on the angle from which you look at it, the stone may appear blue, purple or brownish-yellow. Having said that, most raw crystals are somewhat spoiled by a brownish-yellow component, though it can be made to disappear by the cutter if he heats the stone carefully in an oven to approximately 500°. During the procedure he must pay careful attention to the moment at which the colour turns to blue. This burning is a method of treatment which is regarded as customary in the trade, but the raw stones must be as free of inclusions as possible, since otherwise fissures may occur. In fact working with tanzanite can sometimes give even the most experienced cutter a bit of a headache, the cleavage of this gemstone being very pronounced in one direction. This exclusive gemstone is cut in every imaginable shape from the classical round shape to a number of imaginative designer cuts.

A tanzanite will continue to fascinate with its unusual, captivating aura. Its deep blue with the slightly purple tinge is one of the most extravagant colours known to Man. It personifies immaculate, yet unconventional elegance. A person who acquires one of these exclusive gems is someone who wishes to set himself apart from the hoi polloi. A person who wears it exudes confidence and individuality. The almost magical colour of a perfectly cut tanzanite is one that not only suits confident young women; it is also excellently suited to underlining the individuality of the more mature woman.

In the meantime, almost any price you care to name is being asked - and paid! - for tanzanites of good quality and large size. What makes this stone so popular? Is it simply that fantastic colour? No, it is also the exclusivity of its origin. The stone is particularly highly prized because it is found in only one place in the whole world. The idea of possessing something that not everyone has has always been one of the main criteria in the way we esteem special gems.

Month...............Birthstone

January ........... Garnet
February........... Amethyst
March.............. Aquamarine, Bloodstone
April.................Diamond, White Sapphire
May.................Emerald
June................Pearl, Moonstone, Alexandrite
July.................Ruby
August............ Peridot, Sardonyx
September....... Sapphire
October...........Opal, Tourmaline, Pink Sapphire
November.........Topaz, Citrine
December.........Turquoise, Blue Zircon