The Garnet

Garnets are a wonderfully deep red gemstone popular in anique jewelry and back again today in modern jewelry designs. Africa is the main mother lode of the luscious red garnet, but fancy new colors are emerging as well.

Garnet is the name gemologists call a group of over ten gemstones with the same molecular structure. Red is the primary garnet color but lovely colors of green, pale to bright yellow, fiery orange and fine earth-and umbre shades are also surfacing. Garnets are popular because of the huge payoff of beauty for a small price. Read more

The Amethyst

The passionate color purple has long been considered a royal color and the amethyst has remained the favorite of royalty throughout history. Fine amethysts are featured in the British Crown Jewels and were also a favorite of Catherine the Great and Egyptian royalty. Amethyst or transparent purple quartz, is the prized choice for quartz jewelry.

The famous Italian genius and artist Leonardo Da Vinci wrote that amethyst was able to dissipate evil thoughts and quicken the intelligence.Read more

The Aquamarine

Aquamarine blue is a divine and eternal colour because it is the color of the sky and the water. It has sustaining and life-giving properties. Aquamarine embodies the light blue of the seas. Aquamarine has always been considered a lucky stone for sailors because it was said to come out of the treasure chest of the mermaids. The Latin terms "aqua” means water, and "mare” means sea.

Aquamarines come in a panopoly of the blue color spectrum. They appear in the most transparent light blues and can reach the deepest blues of the deep blue sea. The most exceptional stones are almost a light, clear, platinum blue. Creative gemstone artists are inspired to create special new cuts for the aquamarine, more than any other stone.Read more

The Diamond

Diamonds are the most cherished and highly valued of gemstones. Throughout history, they have been admired by Kings and worn as a symbol of strength, courage and invincibility. Over the centuries the diamond acquired unique status as the ultimate gift of love, in myth and reality. The word 'diamond' comes from the Greek adarnas, meaning unconquerable. It is the hardest mineral known to man, yet it has the simplest chemical composition being crystalized carbon.Read more

The Emerald

The name emerald was derived from the French esmeraude which goes back via Latin to the Greek root smaragdos, meaning green gemstone. The ancient Incas and Aztecs in South America worshipped the emerald as a holy stone. South America, particularly Columbia, produces world class emeralds. The Red Sea had many emerald mines but they were already exploited by the Egyptian Pharaohs between 3000 and 1500 B.C.. They were known as "Cleopatra’s Mines” and were depleted by the greed for the luscious green emerald.Read more

The Pearl

Pearls are an organic gem, created when an oyster covers a foreign object with layers of lustrous nacre. Pearls were once important financial assets, comparable in price to real estate, as thousands of oysters had to be searched for only one pearl. They were rare because they were created by chance.

Pearls today are cultured by man. Shell beads are placed inside an oyster and the oyster is returned to the water. When the pearls are later harvested, the oyster has covered the bead with layers of nacre. Cultured pearls are produced largely in Japan. The warmer waters of the South Pacific produce larger oysters that create huge South Sea cultured pearls and Tahitian black cultured pearls. Freshwater pearls are cultured in freshwater mussels in China.Read more

The Ruby

Ruby is the red variety of the corundum mineral, and one of the hardest minerals on earth because of the addition of chrome. Pure corundum is colorless but slight traces of chrome, iron, titanium or vanadium make for the color. These gemstones show an excellent hardness of 9 on the Moh's scale, second only to diamonds. Only red corundum may be called ruby; any other color is denominate as sapphires. The close relationship of rubies and sapphires has been known since the beginning of the 19th century. Red garnets or spinels were thought to be rubies, up to that time. They also missclassified black ruby as well as the Timur ruby decorating the British Crown Jewels. They're probably not rubies at all, but spinels.Read more

The Peridot

The peridot was first mined in ancient Egypt on the island of Zeberget. Mining was done at night because lore stated that peridot could not be seen during the day. The island was infested with serpents who made peridot mining a dangerous occupation. The Pharoh finally took care of that by driving the serpents into the sea.

The Romans called peridot the evening emerald because its gorgeous green color could be seen at night as well as day. The Crusaders who came back to Europe brought peridot to decorate medieval churches. Large peridots of more than 200 carats, beautify the Shrine of the Three Magi at the Cologne Cathedral.Read more

The Sapphire

Sapphire belongs to the corundum group which is set apart from other gemstones by their very good hardness (Grade 9 on the Mohs’ scale). They are second in hardness to diamonds only, and diamonds represent the hardest mineral on Earth. Because of their good harness, sapphires are easy to care for.

The corundum group consists of pure aluminium oxide, which a long time ago was caused to crystallize into beautiful and splendid gemstones by the pressure and heat in the depths of the ground. Small proportions of other elements, mainly iron and chrome, are responsible for the resulting colours and make the basically white crystals a blue, red, yellow, pink or greenish Sapphire.Read more

The Opal

Opal is a sedimentary in gemstone and contains 6 to 10 percent water, a remnant of that ancient sea. Ever since archaeologist Louis Leakey found six-thousand year old opal artifacts in a cave in Kenya, opal has been beloved for its unique beauty. Gold panners in Australia found the first few pieces of precious opal in 1863 and the miines at White Cliffs began producing in 1890.

Australian opals were born more than 100 million years ago when the deserts of central Australia were a great inland sea. Deposits of silica-laden sediment gathered around the shoreline. When the sea receded and disappeared to become the great Artesian Basin, thirty million years ago, weathering released the silica. It filled cracks in the rocks, layers in clay, and even some fossils. Precious opal evolved from this silica.Read more

The Citrine

Citron is the French word for lemon where the citrine derives it’s name. The citrine is available in yellow to gold to orange brown shades of transparent quartz. Sunny and affordable, citrine can brighten almost any jewelry style, blending especially well with the yellow gleam of polished gold.

Although the darker Madeira wine color orange citrine is the most valued color, many people prefer the bright lemony shades. Citrine is generally more inexpensive than amethyst and is also available in a wide range of calibrated sizes and shapes, including very large size stones.Read more

The Topaz

The topaz is a very common gemstone that has been used for centuries as jewelry. The stone is one of the hardest minerals, and is the hardest silicate mineral found in nature. A silicate of aluminum, topaz contains about 20 percent water and fluorine. The relative proportions of these impurities are responsible for the color of the stones. Crystals with more water are yellow to brown, while those with more fluorine are typically blue or colorless. The most popular color is a rich orange-yellow, resembling the color of sherry wine.Read more