For my American customers, 6mm is about 1/4 inch.

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Model: Kristen C
Photos: Photography by Rose

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BE treated red "Songea" sapphire stud earrings

What they are:  Real sapphires, mined from the earth, gorgeous, and affordable.

What they aren’t: Naturally the color you see.

Songea is a place of origin for some pretty, natural sapphires, but has been commandeered by the trade as the name for diffusion-treated sapphires, usually in shades of yellow, orange, and red.  Diffusion treating involves bringing the gems to high heat (which in itself improves the clarity of the stone) in the presence of beryllium.

If you follow gems and jewelry news, you may remember the “official gem of the Beijing Olympics,” which was marketed as a new find of rare red andesine.  These beautiful stones were flooded into the market and sold on television at high prices as natural gems, until an enterprising gemologist dug deeper and found evidence of color diffusion.

You see, diffusion is a treatment that can be very difficult to detect on ordinary gemological equipment, so the scam was perpetuated unknowingly by many honest vendors who simply couldn’t detect it.   There are few gem labs in the world with the equipment to make a determination of whether a stone is diffused or not; a SIMS (Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer) costs as much as two million dollars and was originally developed to analyze moon rocks.

The same thing happened on a micro level within the gem trade when Songea sapphires first hit the market, but fortunately this time gem dealers caught it before the stones were mass marketed to consumers.  One dealer had to buy back a million dollar’s worth of goods that he had sold as natural before discovering the treatment, and many other dealers either overpaid or had to issue refunds to their buyers.  Unfortunately many overseas vendors are not always the best at disclosing treatments and sell these gems as “heated” or “new heat treatment.”  While accurate in that the stones are treated, that’s not the whole truth.

Buying a sapphire?

Is there anything wrong with buying a Songea sapphire?  None whatsoever!  They are gorgeous, affordable, and the treatment is permanent.  The only things I’d like to see my customers avoid is paying too much for them, or being mislead into thinking the color is 100% natural.  I think of this treatment as similar to the irradiation process that brings us beautiful blue topazes.

Darkfield loupe and polariscope

It’s been a busy couple of months here at Distinction Jewelry, and one of the most interesting (and sometimes frustrating) activities I’ve been engaged in is setting up my own little gemology lab.  I buy my gems very carefully from trusted, reputable sources.  I’ve got a sharp eye with a loupe and I can spot many fakes a mile away with my own trusty little eyeballs.  I send gems out to my gemologist (A GIA graduate gemologist) for testing and verification.

In other words, I was getting along just fine, until the gemology bug bit me and I decided I wanted to learn the nuts and bolts of gem innards myself.  That’s fabulous in many ways, because I love to learn and I love to buy new toys.  The downside to this latest obsession of mine is that the toys are expensive, and there is a LOT to learn.  There’s a reason people go to long, expensive, and often remotely located schools to learn gemology (I have a hankering to attend one in Thailand), but my low budget and addiction to doing things the hard way demand I do this on my own for the time being.

My initial setup includes the following:

• Refractometer
• Polariscope
• Dichroscope
• Specific gravity scale
• Darkfield loupe
• Jadeite filter and Hanneman PMCF filter
• Mini microscope, cheap and tiny but surprisingly useful
• Assorted other loupes, lights, and magnifiers
• Jury-rigged UV light box

Precision faceted peridot posing with my dichroscope

Just choosing the equipment was an adventure unto itself.  I try to keep my expenses as low as possible, because eventually they all have to be built into what I charge customers for finished jewelry.  Nothing in this industry comes cheap if you buy quality, and cheap can often be sadistically worthless in incalculable ways.  One place I decided to economize was the purchase of the refractometer, for which I opted to pay about $400.00 less than I perhaps should have.

It arrived, and I eagerly delved in with a packet of gems whose identity I was certain of.  I looked into the depths of its glowing orange light, read the scale, and compared to to my reference list.

Uh-oh.  Unless all of the gems had suddenly decided to undergo a radical change of their internal structure overnight, my new toy was pulling numbers out of its optical prism and watching my confusion with snickers of delight.  I sent it back home to live with its mother and obtained a new refractometer, which arrived yesterday.  After sternly warning it about the horrific fate of its misbehaving predecessor, I put it to the test.

It worked.

Polariscope, darkfield loupe, and refractometer

I heaved a sigh of relief, identified a few gems, and ran eagerly over to the computer to blog about it, because that’s what any self-respecting dork like myself does when experiencing elation few normal people are likely to share.

Many thanks to GemologyOnline.com and its many helpful experts, The Gemology Project, PrettyRock.com, and Andrea Robinson for their inspiration, education, and assistance.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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!

The only problem is, determining what is and is not topaz and what treatments have been applied can be confusing, given the usual fudging done by the less scrupulous members of the gem industry.  Topaz commonly occurs in clear, golden, and golden pink.  It can also be found in other colors such as pink and light blue, but because topaz is so easily and commonly treated with heat, irradiation, and coatings to produce various shades of blue and pink, it’s safest as a buyer to assume that those colors are not natural and to be very sceptical of anyone who claims otherwise.

So, here you have it: the buyer’s guide to all those topazes! 

White topaz is the natural form most topaz is found in; it’s sparkly, clear, and makes a very affordable diamond substitute, and is normally not treated or enhanced.  Mohs hardness 8.

Golden topaz is naturally occurring as well, and is quite scarce compared to white topaz.  This beautiful champagne colored stone sells for considerably more than white topaz and the various enhanced colors of topaz.  It is sometimes referred to as precious topaz.  When buying golden topaz, use take care to make sure that you are not being sold citrine, a less expensive gem that occurs in some similar colors.  Mohs hardness 8.

Imperial Topaz is the most valuable color.  It is naturally occurring and in order to be considered imperial topaz, it must have both golden tan and pink color tones.  This material is also referred to by some as precious topaz.  Mohs hardness 8.

Sky blue topaz is white or light blue topaz which has been heated and or irradiated to change the color to a light blue.  The color is stable and permanent, and for that reason many sellers do not disclose the fact that this is not a naturally occurring color.  Mohs hardness 8, AGTA treatment code R, H.

Swiss blue topaz is white or light blue topaz which has been heated and or irradiated to change the color to a bright, saturated, cheerful blue.  The color is stable and permanent, and for that reason many sellers do not disclose the fact that this is not a naturally occurring color.  Mohs hardness 8, AGTA treatment code R, H.

London blue topaz is white or light blue topaz which has been heated and or irradiated to change the color to a saturated, deep blue.  This is the darkest blue of the various blue topazes and can make a decent stand-in for blue sapphire, although the difference will be obvious to the educated eye.  The color is stable and permanent, and for that reason many sellers do not disclose the fact that this is not a naturally occurring color.  Mohs hardness 8, AGTA treatment code R, H.

Smoky topaz doesn’t exist!  What some people refer to as smoky topaz is in fact smoky quartz.  Quartz is a less expensive material than topaz.

Yellow topaz doesn’t exist either; this material is in fact citrine, which is a yellow quartz and a very popular gemstone in its own right.

Lemon topaz is another phantom.  It is lemon quartz, which is also known by the more exotic sounding trade name Oro Verde citrine.

Pink topaz is color coated white topaz.  It cannot be re-cut or re-polished without removing the color (unlike the irradiated/heated blue topazes which are have a permanent, stable color throughout the stone), and care should be taken not to damage the coating.  Pink topaz makes a wonderful substitute for pink sapphire, but probably should not be used in wedding or engagement rings due to potential issues with the durability of the coating.  Mohs hardness 8, AGTA treatment code C.

Green topaz is diffusion coated white topaz.  Although the color is permanent, green topaz cannot be re-cut or re-polished without removing the color.  Green topaz is probably the most affordable emerald alternative, although I prefer chrome diopside, a natural, untreated stone, for this purpose.  Mohs hardness 8, AGTA treatment code C.

Ice blue topaz is diffusion coated white topaz.  Although the color is permanent, ice blue topaz cannot be re-cut or re-polished without removing the color, which is a vibrant, ultra-saturated medium blue.  Mohs hardness 8, AGTA treatment code C.

Mystic topaz, rainbow topaz, mercury mist, twilight mystic, and various other trade-named multi-colored topazes are color coated topaz.  They are treated with a process called diffusion.  These coatings can create some spectacular effects; however the buyer simply needs to be aware that the coatings may be damaged over time, especially when they are worn in rings or other jewelry which takes a lot of abuse.  Mohs hardness 8, AGTA treatment code C.

I personally recommend that customers not invest a large sum of money in a piece of coated topaz jewelry.  I tend to steer clear of setting these “novelty” topazes in gold or combining them with more valuable stones.  Showcasing them in a simple sterling silver prong setting will keep your investment down and even allow you to have the stone replaced easily if the coating deteriorates.  No coated topaz should be ultrasonically cleaned or steam cleaned.

So to sum up the various treatments:

White: Natural
Golden: Natural
Imperial: Natural
Precious: Natural
Sky blue: Heated/Irradiated – permanent
Swiss blue: Heated/Irradiated – permanent
London blue: Heated/Irradiated – permanent
Smoky: Is quartz, not topaz
Yellow: Is citrine (a variety of quartz), not topaz
Lemon: Is lemon quartz, AKA Oro Verde citrine
Pink: Coated
Green: Diffusion coated
Ice blue: Diffusion coated
Mystic: Coated
Rainbow: Coated
Others: Coated

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.

Now it’s known to be in some cases a heat treated form of carnelian, which is an agate, and in others glass.  I believe mine to be agate, not glass based on how it breaks when I smash it with a hammer (how’s that for careful scientific analysis?  Whatever works…..).  What has emerged as the proper name for this material is “crab fire agate.”

This name serves to somewhat distinguish the stone from “fire agate,” which is a rare and expensive gemstone that displays brilliant, opal-like flashes of color which are known as fire in the trade.  Crab fire agate is an agate, with an orange color and fire-like variagations, so the name does make sense.  However, it does not have what jewelers call “fire” and is entirely different from fire agate dispite the similar name.

Crab fire agate is a descriptive name which happens to be very similar to the “real” name of fire agate, a very different and far more valuable gem with an optical characteristic known as fire.  I happen to love crab fire agate, but it’s important to me to make sure my buyers know what they are getting, and the names are close enough as to be potentially very misleading.

If you look at modern-day reproduction Dzi beads (also made from agate) you will see very similar “crazing” or pattern lines.  I can only assume that a very similar treatment is used for both crab fire agate and Dzi beads.