03/16/2016
What is so special about Sapphires?.
Well the Blue Stands out to anyone who likes the color blue.But, Did you know that there is a lot more to the Sapphire than just about the rich blue color? There are,
Blue Sapphires
Pink Sapphires
Yellow Sapphires
Padparadscha Sapphires
Unique & Rare Sapphire Colors
Star Sapphires
Rubies Are Sapphires?
Each of the sapphires have a special meaning.
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Sapphire Colors & Varieties
Blue Sapphires- Best known for their rare and the depth of color
Pink Sapphires- Most pink sapphires are colored by traces of chromium,very high chromium concentrations will create a ruby, and lower concentrations create pink sapphires. If the trace element titanium is also included in the crystal structure, the sapphire will have a more purplish pink hue.
Yellow Sapphires- yellow sapphires are frequently subjected to intense heat and diffusion treatments. Heat treatment transforms worthless rough into marketable gems, vastly increasing the supply of attractive yellow sapphires on the market today. Unheated yellow sapphires with strong saturation remain quite rare.
Padparadscha Sapphires-The term “padparadscha” is derived from the Singhalese word for aquatic lotus blossom, which has an unusual salmon color. Many agree that padparadschas straddle the color boundary between pink and orange.
Padparadscha sapphires may be little known to the general public, but they are treasured by gemstone connoisseurs. Yet after decades of debate, collectors, dealers, and gemologists cannot agree on a uniform standard for the padparadscha color range. Points of contention include how pink or how orange these sapphires can be, and whether certain tones are too dark to qualify. Some padparadscha sapphires are not evenly salmon colored, but rather color zoned with pink and yellow.
Unique & Rare Sapphire Colors
Purple, Lavender, And Violet Sapphires- The colors purple and violet are often confused, but are actually distinct hues. Purple is a blended hue: red with a mixture of blue. Violet, on the other hand, is a blend of blue with purple.
Naturally, colored green sapphires range from light yellow-green, to medium yellowish green (“olive” or “leaf” green) to blue-greens.
Green is a rare color for sapphireColor-Change Sapphirese. Supplies may be limited, but green sapphire is virtually unknown to the public
Star Sapphires-Many sapphires shift color between purple and violet under different lighting conditions, but a few rare and exceptional sapphires change color dramatically–from grayish or greenish blue in daylight or fluorescent lighting to brownish red in incandescent light.
The color-change phenomenon rarely alternates between bold or saturated hues but it makes these stones prized items for gem connoisseurs. Their value is based less upon how attractive their alternating colors are, and more on how dramatic and complete the change of color is.
For color-change sapphires, clarity is far less important than the degree of color-change. Eye-clean stones are extremely rare, and most collectors are content with slightly included color-change gems.
White sapphires are found in all sizes, but the larger the stone, the less likely that it will be entirely colorless. Therefore, small white sapphires are more common in the marketplace than large ones.White sapphires can occur in almost any corundum deposit, but gem-quality stones are exceedingly rare.
