Gemstone Jewellery

Gemstone jewellery contains a vital energy enhanced by precious metals. Gemstone jewellery  positive influence on a human wellbeing enhanced by precious metals has been known since an Ancient Egypt, where a different gemstone was assigned to each month of the year, also known asbirthstones.

What are Gemstones?

A gemstone or gem is usually cut and polished piece of attractive mineral used in making Gemstone jewellery. But it's important to notice that some gemstones are not minerals, but rocks (such as lapis-lazuli) or organic in nature (amber or jet).

Gemstones Characteristics and Classification

The value of the gemstones will depend on characteristics such as hardness and rarity, but soft gemstones also can be used in gemstone jewellery production depending on a stone aesthetics value, such as lustre.

It's very common to call some of the gemstones as precious or semi precious. The division is quite arbitrary, mainly based on fashion trends which have changes quite often in the last few hundred years. Today diamond, ruby, sapphire and emerald are considered to be precious stones.

Gemstones can also be classified into different groups or species, and varieties.

Each gemstone group shares a common crystal structure or/and chemical composition, for instance Beryl, Corundum, Feldspar, Garnet, Jade, Opal, Quartz, Zoisite are some of the best known groups.

Each group or species may have subgroups or varieties. Emerald, aquamarine, bixbite, goshenite, heliodor and morganite are varieties of beryl and have completely different colours.

Gemstones are also categorised in terms of:

• refractive index 
• dispersion
• specific gravity
• hardness
• cleavage
• fracture
• lustre
• pleochroism or double refraction
• luminescence
• absorption spectrum
• inclusions

Gemstones Treatments

Some of the gemstones are often treated to enhance the colour or clarity. The treatment can affect the value of the stone depending on the treatment, it's extend and the stability of the stone after treatment.

Heat treatment can improve gemstones colour or clarity, for example most of citrine is made by heating amethyst, and much aquamarine is heat treated to change the yellow or green tones into blue or enhance an existing blue colour.

Radiation

The beautiful lighter and the darker blue shades of blue topaz are achieved through the irradiation that changes the colour from white to blue.

Most greened quartz is also irradiated to give it the yellow-green colour.

Waxing and Oiling

Some stones, for example, Turquoise and Emeralds, tend to have natural fissures that sometimes are filled with wax or oil to disguise them. The wax or oil are also coloured to make the gemstones to appear of better colour and clarity.

Fracture Filling

Fracture filling is used with different gemstones such as diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and rubies. The treatment involves a filling of surface or internal fractures with a foreign substance to improve a gemstone appearance. The treatment is inexpensive and produces a visually more appealing and apparently valuable gemstone.

Synthetic Gemstone Jewellery

Synthetic gemstones are manufactured to imitate other gemstones. For example, cubic zirconia and Moissanite are synthetic diamond imitations that copy the look and colour of the diamonds but possess neither its chemical nor physical characteristics.

Artificial Gemstone Jewellery

Artificial gemstones are lab created and are not imitations. Artificial gemstones will possess identical chemical and physical characteristics of the natural stone and will have a more vivid colour due to lack of impurities. However, natural gemstones are still considered more valuable than artificial gemstones due to their relative scarcity.

Examples of artificial gemstones are diamonds, ruby, sapphires and emeralds.

Gemstones Cutting and Polishing

gemstones used in jewellery making are usually cut and polished. There are two main types of Gemstones:

• cabochons- smooth, dome shaped stones, such as opal, turquoise, variscite. These gems are designed to show the stone's colour or surface properties. The surface of the stone is grinned, shaped and polished using grinding wheels and polishing agents.
• faceted- cut with a faceting machine at regular intervals at exact angles and used on transparent gemstone to maximise optical effects such as light reflection and sparkle. The stones can be cut into any known shape depending on the optical properties of the stone

Gemstone Colour

The colour of the gemstone will depend on a way the day light is absorbed when it passes through the stone.

The day light has a colours spectrum from blue to red, gemstones tend to absorb some of the light and the shade of the spectrum reflected will give the stone its colour. A ruby appears red because it absorbs all the other colours of white light except red.

Despite the fact that different varieties of the same stone have the same chemical composition, the colour exhibited can be completely different- every now and then an atom is replaced by a completely different atom (impurities) causing the stone to absorb certain colours and leave the other colours unaffected.

Some gemstone treatments use this fact to manipulate the colour of the gem.

Gemstone Jewellery Valuation

There is no universally accepted gemstone grading system apart of diamonds, which are graded using GIA system developed in early 1950. The system is based on 4C's (colour/clarity/cut/carat) and uses X10 magnification for standard clarity grading. The rest of the gemstones are graded using naked eye.

IGI, GIA, AGS, American Gem Trade Laboratory, AGL, EGL, GAAJ, GIT, AIGS, SSEF, Gübelin Gem Lab are international laboratories that grade gemstones. Till recently each one of the above bodies used its own methodology in gemstone grading which led to an establishment of the Laboratory Manual Harmonisation Committee (LMHC) that aims at the standardisation of wording on reports of each one of the laboratory, but the differences do still exist.

What Makes Gemstone Jewellery Valuable?

• Physical characteristics that make a colour stone valuable are:
• Colour
• Clarity -to a lesser extent
• Cut
• Optical phenomena-interaction of light and matter, for example colour zoning (uneven distribution of colour within a gemstone)
• Asteria -star effects
• Water- combination of colour and transparencyfirst water=gem of the finest water, second water, third water,byewater

The value of the gemstone is also affected by the fact if they are considered to be precious or semi-precious stones. This will depend on culture, fashion trends and the stone rarity. For example, up to the discoveries of bulk amethyst in Brazil in the 19th century, amethyst was considered a precious stone.

Gemstone Jewellery Certification and Research

• International Gemological Institute (IGI) - independent laboratory for grading and evaluation of diamonds, jewellery and colored stones.
• Gemological Institute of America (GIA)- provider of education services and diamond grading reports
• American Gemological Society (AGS)- neither widely recognized nor as old as the GIA.
• American Gem Trade Laboratory- part of the American Gem Trade Association (AGTA) a trade organization of jewellers and dealers of colored stones.
• American Gemological Laboratories (AGL)- taken over by "Collector's Universe" and specializes in certification of collectables.
• European Gemological Laboratory (EGL)- internationally recognized and specializes in diamonds and tanzanite.
• Gemological Association of All Japan (GAAJ)- gemological research.
• Gemmological Institute of Thailand (GIT)-  related to Chulalongkorn University.
• Asian Institute of Gemmological Sciences (AIGS)- the oldest gemological institute in South East Asia, involved in gemological education and gem testing
• Swiss Gemmological Institute (SSEF)- founded by Prof. Henry Hänni and focuses on coloured gemstones and the identification of natural pearls
• Gübelin Gem Lab- Swiss lab founded by Dr. Eduard Gübelin and specializes in high-end pearls, coloured gemstones and diamonds

Gold Amethyst Jewellery

Gold Amethyst Jewellery is a very popular choice for many- amethyst is not only an exceptionally beautiful but also a very enduring gem due to its hardness (seven on the Mohs scale).

Amethyst is a February Birthstone and known as a stone of change, protection & enlightenment and is believed to attract good luck and love.

The word amethyst came from the Greek and means "without drunkenness" (a- ="not" and methustos="intoxicated").

The ancient legend tells that Bacchus, the God of Wine, grew angry at mortals. He vowed the next mortal that crossed his path would be eaten by tigers. At that time, a beautiful young maiden named Amethyst was on her way to worship the Goddess Diana. Diana, knowing of Bacchus vow, turned Amethyst into a statue of pure crystalline quartz to protect her from the brutal claws. Bacchus, witnessing the miracle, wept tears of wine in remorse for his action at the sight of the beautiful statue, staining her purple.

Amethyst was used as a gemstone since the Ancient Egyptians times. In antiquity the amethyst was deployed for intaglios to make engraved seals with raised design on the material being stamped, especially wax.

Ancient Greeks and Romans considered amethyst to be a strong antidote against drunkenness and used to wear the gem and made drinking vessels out of it. Medieval European soldiers wore amethyst as amulets to protect them in battles.

Gold Amethyst Jewellery- Hues and Tones

Amethyst is a violet variety of quartz with primary hues from a light pinkish violet to a deep purple but it may also exhibit one or both of secondary hues, such as  red and blue.

The ideal grade of Amethyst is called "Deep Siberian" and has a primary purple hue of around 75-80 percent, 15-20 percent blue and red (depending on the light source) secondary hues.

The colour of the stones you see in our gold amethyst jewellery can be attributed to the presence of a few elements, such as manganese, ferric thiocyanate, sulphur, ferric iron impurities, iron and aluminium.

When exposed to heat, amethyst generally changes its colour to yellow, and much of the citrine or yellow quartz is merely burnt amethyst.

Synthetic Gold Amethyst Jewellery

Synthetic amethyst has the same chemical and physical properties as natural amethyst. It's sometimes very hard to differentiate between the two with absolute certainty without advanced gemmological testing which is very often cost-prohibitive.

Amethyst Geographic Distribution

Amethyst' is found in many places: Minas Gerais in Brazil, South Korea, India, United States, Nova Scotia in Canada, Maissau in Lower Austria, Zambia and Russia.

Amethyst Value

Before the discovery of extensive deposits in locations such as Brazil, amethyst was considered to be a precious gemstone along with diamond, sapphire, ruby, and emerald.

The highest grade amethyst (Deep Russian) is exceptionally rare and therefore its value will dependent on the demand of collectors when one is found.