If you enjoy rare and precious gemstones and their related stories, here you will find a litany of gemstone ramblings, gemological observations, and useful and time-wasting trivia bought from behind-the-scenes in the rough and cut gem markets of Asia and Africa.
Etched into the side of this unusual grossular green garnet crystal from Southern Ethiopia, is the somewhat minuscule hallucinogenic atomical etchings looking like a futuristic cityscape. Too much absinthe sir ?
A 50CT+ Barcode Emerald, or, to be more precise, white beryl with chromium-rich emerald zoning. From Skardu, Pakistan. A highly unusual and collectible piece.
Green Tourmaline From Rubaya, Democratic Republic of the Congo Known somewhat casually and unofficially as Congo #2 by Chanthaburi’s hundreds of African rough gemstone dealers, these electric grass-green tourmaline crystals burst out of a new deposit in the Eastern Congo’s Rubaya area in July / August 2019. The crystal sizes and clarity from this mine have been absolutely exceptional with…
Holy Cow Batman! Is That A Weird Near Ultra-Violet Sapphire ? No. Its a deeply colored vanadium and chrome rich sapphire from Tunduru in Tanzania. Granted this sapphire does have a powerful fibre-optic parked up its rear-end which explains the intensity of the colors. But, what the fiber-optic does not explain, is, the combination of colors, the directions and also…
A strange parcel of crystals from deep in the Oromia state, Southern Ethiopia, came to the office last week. The crystals richly green, had a blue-green color and olive’s color another way. We noticed that several crystals looked reddish with a light when viewed in particular directions. The phenomena appears to be an unusual and not-entirely-explicable interplay between pleochroism, flourescence…
Red, orange and pink parallel lines show through in the twinning in this unheated natural Mozambique ruby. While a relatively common feature in rubies from Mozambique, they generally have to be placed under the dark-field type lighting of a gemological microscope to be seen so easily. In the rough-gemstone stage, should the twinning be quite prominent, the preforming manufacturer will…
Pyramidal shaped calcite crystals in this 2 Carat Unheated Mozambique Ruby peep out. The clear crystal shapes are still intact and are not deformed in any way. This inclusion type is called an syngenetic type of inclusion and is likely to have formed at the same time as the host ruby crystal. An intact crystal such as this is strongly…
