Distinction Jewelry – The Blog

I’m excited by odd things, being a jeweler!  A cool gemstone can actually make my heart beat faster, and it just happened when I opened up my latest gem order and pulled out several varieties of rose cut gemstones to use in my Little Beauties line of stud earrings.  You see, the rose cut is a cabochon (cut with a flat back to set in a bezel) that is faceted!

Several of my customers have wished aloud that the impeccable comfort and wearability of my Little Beauties earrings could be merged with the sparkle of the faceted gems in my Little Gems line.  Well, that dream just came true on a small scale.  I have rose cuts in 6mm black spinel, lemon quartz, and a nice dark pink garnet.  I set several pairs last night when I got home from jury duty and they turned out so fabulous!  I can’t wait to photograph them and list them for sale, you all are going to love them.

The rose cut has been around for quite a while, but is relatively rare.  It’s only recently that I’ve seen a small selection of rose cut gem offerings from one of my favorite dealers at an affordable price, so these are great for jewelry collectors and those who appreciate the unusual.

If you’ve found this article, you probably love the rich, royal color of sugilite and are wondering if that strand of beads you found on ebay for under ten dollars could possibly be the same stuff you’ve seen for sale for far, far more.  The short answer is no.  Genuine sugilite with good color is quite valuable, and there is a lucrative market in dying stones to resemble sugilite as well as in calling any stone with some purple in it sugilite.

This will serve as a beginner’s guide for weeding out the fakes, but I would suggest running your potential purchase past an expert before buying if at all possible.  It’s fake sugilite if:

• It’s cheap.  You can expect to pay $35.00 (bargain price!) to over $200.00 for a strand of decent sugilite beads.  For a cabochon of ring size, you are looking at a retail price of $25-$200.00 depending on the quality of the stone.  I would be suspicious of any piece of finished jewelry containing sugilite for under a hundred dollars unless the stone is tiny, has very poor color, or just has a few sugilite beads in it.
• It’s called flower sugilite, Russian sugilite, Chinese sugilite, or sugilite jasper.
• It’s called a sugilite “crystal” and it’s anything larger than tiny.
• It’s a flat, uniform dull purple color with thick black veins running through it.
• It’s identified as “reconsituted,” “assembled,” “manmade,” or “lab grown.”

They’re two different things, right?  Or are they?  Rubies and sapphires are actually color variations of the same mineral, corundum.   Corundum occurrs in a remarkably wide color spectrum including blues, pinks, reds, yellows, greens, blacks, whites, and every shade in between.  Traditionally, the red variety has been called ruby while all of the others were termed sapphires.

The waters get muddied when one looks at ruby colors, because rubies are commonly seen as a stone with a wide range of hues from true red to wine to pink.  The most hard-line interpretation tells us to call only true red corundum ruby, and all of the others pink sapphires.  This is a little problematic however because most people outside of the jewelry field think of many shades of dark pink corundum as ruby, and would never think to ask for a “dark pink sapphire.”

Jewelry stores have been marketing light, sparkly pinks as pink sapphire, dark pink to red shades as ruby, and when you see a true red ruby for less than a small fortune, it is likely to be corundum grown in a lab, as the true red is a rare and expensive shade of corundum.

At the bottom of all of this confusion lies one reassuring fact: it’s all basically the same stone.  Your main job is to pick the shade that makes you happy, and at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter if your jeweler called it a ruby or a pink sapphire.

Oh, and the ring in my post?  I listed it for sale as a ruby…..but pink sapphire would be just as accurate, if not more so.

Prices of stones tend to rise exponentially as their size increases.  This is because of two factors.  First, larger patches of gem-quality material that can be cut into a faceted stone are rarer than smaller ones, so for most stones there is a smaller supply of larger sizes.  For example, a .5 carat stone might cost 25.00 a carat, while a 1 carat gem of the same material might cost 100.00 a carat.

Second, the larger stone weighs more…and remember how much the price per carat just jumped?  These factors help explain why size can make a tremendous difference between an affordable stone and an out-of-reach one.

What’s a good compromise size on a budget?  I’m partial to 4mm.  Any smaller than that and it becomes difficult to truly make out the stone’s color and brilliance, but at 4mm they show up nicely.  Weight varies from stone to stone, but the weight of a 4mm stone is usually somewhere around .5 carat.  Many colored gemstones can be had in a 4mm size for anywhere between $10-40.00, and you can even get a decent ruby or sapphire for under or around $100.00.

In the 4mm range, your choice of gemstone often won’t make more than a $5-20.00 difference in the cost of your custom piece.

If you really want a precious stone on a tight budget, consider a 3mm ruby, emerald, or sapphire.  This is pretty tiny and won’t make for a flashy display…but if you have personal or sentimental reasons for wanting the stone, one can be yours for $25-40.00.

If you want a large stone at an affordable cost, don’t despair.  There are a number of very nice gems which are common enough and occur in large enough formations that your bling won’t cost you a month’s salary.  Taking an 8mm stone as an example, I can easily get my hands on nice amethyst, citrine, blue, pink, or white topaz, sometimes garnet and labradorite.

If you love colored gemstones but don’t have a fortune to spend on that cocktail ring in the jeweler’s window, don’t despair.  Thanks to some little-explained quirks of the gem trade, you may be able to indulge in the color and sparkle you love without taking out a second mortgage on the house!

Ever look around at the prices of loose gemstones online and been completely baffled?  Ever wondered why one site has a sapphire for $50.00 and another for $50,000?  It all has to do with rarity.  

Should I not have said quality, you ask?

Not really.  Quality tends to be an abstract when it comes to colored stones.  Pricing factors include availability, demand, color, size, cut, clarity, origins, and treatment.  I plan to go into some of these factors in more detail in a later article; my point for this one is simple: beautiful gemstones need not cost a fortune.

If there is a certain color you love, you may be happy to find that there is a lesser known or less traditional stone that will provide just what you are looking for.  Aquamarine is a costly stone, but many shades of aquamarine are well emulated by blue topaz.  Emeralds cost a fortune, but chrome diopside provides beautiful, rich green and great clarity at a fraction of the cost.

If it’s a particular, precious stone that is important to you, for example a birthstone, you may find that even precious gems can be affordable in smaller sizes, for instance in the 3-5mm range.  That will, given the right setting in a ring, give you the beauty and the stone you want without bankrupting you.

I love colored gems and would be happy to guide you to a choice that works within your taste and your budget; I welcome custom orders and have both a large inventory of beautiful, reasonably priced gems and some excellent sources for anything you might want me to order.

By the way….the beautiful chrome diopside ring shown in the photo above is available through my etsy shop for only $100.00!  Take a peek!

Okay, I’ll admit it: I have a crush on topaz.  This versatile stone is beautiful, durable, and affordable, and it comes in a wide range of lovely blues as well as several other colors.  It has a Mohs hardness of 8 (very hard!) and a high refractive index (sparkle/light reflection).  It does have a relatively strong cleavage, meaning that like a diamond it can be fractured with a sharp blow.  Like any gem, even a diamond, it should not be treated as indestructable, however it is one of the more durable, affordable gemstones on the market. (more…)

When this gorgeous new material showed up on the market a few years ago, I had a feeling it wasn’t a completely natural stone, but I loved it none the less.  I bought a fair amount of it, and I have several items available made with it in my online shop.  Back in the day, I scoured the internet and asked experts, trying to find out more about what dealers were claiming to be a natural stone called Mexican fire agate. (more…)

Pink is an enduringly popular color for women’s jewelry, and there are many options to choose from!

Garnet
Pink sapphire
Pink topaz
Pink tourmaline
Rhodochrosite
Rhodonite
Rose quartz
Ruby

Ahhh, I love gem buying time!  The thrill of finding lovely new stones to set into my designs and offer my custom order folks.  Thanks to a trade show and an extended sit-down with one of my favorite gem dealers, I have quite a list of new stones to introduce you to.  I don’t object to breaking up matched pairs.  If interested in any of them, shoot me an email at distinctionjewelrycentral@gmail.com .  And the stones are….. (more…)

Green gemstones seem, for some reason, to be both rarer and more expensive than stones of other colors.  This holds particularly true for faceted gems.  This list will give you an idea of some of the options out there.

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