Fashion is On

“Emerald is the birthstone for May and is known for being the 20th and 35th wedding anniversary stone. Many believe wearing emerald brings you wisdom and growth. This is commonly given as a gift for an anniversary or as a symbol of love and fidelity.

At one point in time emeralds were prescribed for eye diseases because the beautiful color of green was thought to be quite soothing to the eyes. In fact early stone cutters kept emeralds at their working tables to look at as a way of giving their eyes a break.

The ancient Egyptians mined emeralds in the eastern region. In more recent times North Carolina is where the new source of quality emeralds can be found. You can find more emeralds in other areas of America, Colombia, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Madagascar, Nigeria, and Russia.

Egyptians engraved emeralds with the symbols of spring foliage to represent eternal youth and buried the stones with the dead. The ancient Romans thought emeralds were associated with fertility and rebirth.

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Types of Garnet
ALMANDINE  Fe3Al2(SiO4)3       reddish brown to brown 
ANDRADITE  Ca3Fe2(SiO4)3       brown, black or green
GROSSULAR  Ca3Al2(SiO4)3      colorless, orange or green 
PYROPE  Mg3Al2(SiO4)3              dark red to ruby red
SPESSARTINE  Mn3Al2(SiO4)3    orange, pink or brown 
UVAROVITE  Ca3Cr2(SiO4)3       green

Common Garnet varieties:

• Pyrope (also called Bohemian garnet, or Cape ruby) is the best know of all garnets.  This gem is a deep rich red.  This gem is very inexpensive.
• Rhodolite: Raspberry red to dark bubble gem pink.   Prices are nicely affordable.
• Umbalite:  Pink to peachy pink. Hard to find and can be costly.
• Hessonite: Rich burnt orange to reddish orange.  These can get pricey for gems over 1 carat in size.
• Spessartite: Red with flashes of orange. Can be dark with brown undertones.  Medium price range
• Mandarine: Fantastic bright orange.  Rare and pricey. 
• Mali: medium green-yellow (chartreuse) color
• Tsavorite:  Bright green. These gems are becoming extremely popular and prices continues to rise.  Tsavorite is usually not found in large sizes. Gems above 2 carats are rare and can run into the thousands of dollars.  
• Demantoid: Light green, yellow green, yellow brown.  Not found in large sizes. Gems above 2 carats are rare and can run into many thousands of dollars.  

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Aquamarine is a fascinatingly beautiful gemstone. Women the world over love it for its fine blue shades which can complement almost any skin or eye colour, and creative gemstone designers are inspired by it as they are by hardly any other gem, which enables them to create new artistic cuts again and again.

Its light blue arouses feelings of sympathy, trust, harmony and friendship. Good feelings. Feelings which are based on mutuality and which prove their worth in lasting relationships. The blue of aquamarine is a divine, eternal colour, because it is the colour of the sky. However, aquamarine blue is also the colour of water with its life-giving force. And aquamarine really does seem to have captured the lucid blue of the oceans. No wonder, when you consider that according to the saga it originated in the treasure chest of fabulous mermaids, and has, since ancient times, been regarded as the sailors’ lucky stone. Its name is derived from the Latin ‘aqua’ (water) and ‘mare’ (sea). It is said that its strengths are developed to their best advantage when it is placed in water which is bathed in sunlight. However, it is surely better still to wear aquamarine, since according to the old traditions this promises a happy marriage and is said to bring the woman who wears it joy and wealth into the bargain. An ideal gem, not only for loving and married couples.

A gemstone with many good qualities

Aquamarine is one of our most popular and best-known gemstones, and distinguishes itself by many good qualities. It is almost as popular as the classics: ruby, sapphire and emerald. In fact it is related to the emerald, both belonging to the beryl family. The colour of aquamarine, however, is usually more even than that of the emerald. Much more often than its famous green cousin, aquamarine is almost entirely free of inclusions. Aquamarine has good hardness (7.5 to 8 on the Mohs scale) and a wonderful shine. That hardness makes it very tough and protects it to a large extent from scratches.

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Birthstones have been linked to our dates of birth for centuries. Many cultures originally assigned a specific gemstone to signify birth during each sign of the zodiac, but over time the tradition shifted until it became common for a single gem to represent each month of the year.

Different cultures chose unique sets of twelve stones. The folklore attached to stones differed from one group of people to another, but they all shared the belief that wearing your birthstone brought good luck.

Birthstone jewelry is as popular today as it ever was, and it’s plentiful — we can choose from an endless selection of jewelry set with our own special gem.

January Birthstone – Garnet

Garnet Color
Garnets used in birthstone jewelry are usually deep red, but the gemstones are found in nearly every color except blue.

Garnet Folklore
Red garnets have long been associated with blood purification. They were believed to protect against food poisoning, snake bite, and hemorrhage.

February Birthstone – Amethyst

Amethyst Color
Amethyst is a form of quartz. Its color varies from pale lilac to dark purple.

Amethyst Folklore
Amethyst was believed to help protect the wearer from becoming intoxicated. The gemstone is widely known as a symbol of peace and tranquility.

March Birthstone – Aquamarine

Aquamarine Color
Aquamarine exists in all shades of blue. Clear blue aquamarine is more valuable than stones with traces of other colors.

Aquamarine Folklore
Aquamarine is said to protect sailors while they are at sea. The gems were also worn to prevent seasickness and other types of stomach ailments.

April Birthstone – Diamond

Diamond Color
Diamonds are the most durable substance on earth. Most are colorless, but colored variations are growing more popular every year.

Diamond Folklore
Some ancient cultures associated diamonds with lighting bolts, believing they were formed when lightning struck the earth. They are a symbol of courage and true love.

May Birthstone – Emerald

Emerald Color
Emeralds vary from light to dark green, and most are embedded with bits of other substances. Perfectly clear emeralds are rare and very expensive, so it is not uncommon for emeralds to be treated in some way to enhance their appearance.

Emerald Folklore
Some cultures believed that emeralds gave the wearer psychic powers. They were thought to improve both eyesight and fertility.

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Some gems – like pearls, amber, coral, and ivory – are organic. This means they come from plants or animals. But most gems are minerals: natural, inorganic materials with specific chemical compositions. Most have a characteristic structure, too. You probably already know the names of some minerals commonly found in jewelry stores: topaz, sapphire, emerald, and ruby, for example. Synthetic gems have become increasingly popular like this titanium bracelet, which are exact replicas of the real gem with the strength of titanium.

Three traits of all gems

A substance isn’t automatically considered a gem just because it’s used in jewelry or just because it falls in the mineral category. Items like bones, seeds, and hair have all been used in jewelry, but that doesn’t place them in the same category as rubies, pearls, and amber. You will some time find gems in tungsten carbide rings as well.

To be a gem, a substance must share three important traits with all other gems: beauty, rarity, and durability. Each trait, however, represents a range, so all gems can possess different levels of all three traits.

Beauty

Throughout the centuries, humans have cherished the color of gleam of finished gems. Mineral crystals brought up from the dark depths of the earth, organic gems created by life processes – all gems worthy of the name share the virtue of beauty.

But because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it isn’t always easy to categorize what’s beautiful and what isn’t. One accepted definition of beauty holds that it’s a combination of qualities that delight the senses or appeal to the mind. In other words, a thing of beauty might not cause everybody to react the same way, but it will cause everybody to react – it will have visual appeal.

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Of all the precious gemstones, diamonds have for years, been typically considered to be the most precious and valued of all the precious gemstones. Diamonds usually range in colors from yellow to bluish white and be found from very small to very large. Other precious stone used for jewelry include rubies, emeralds, and sapphires as well as the less expensive stones, chrysoberyl, topaz, and zircon. Among gemstones considered to be semiprecious stones, the most common gemstones used for jewelry include, amethyst, garnet, opal, aquamarine, jade , turquoise, agate, onyx, lapis lazuli, and malachite.

Gemstones that originate from animals or organic instead of mineral, and are considered to be organic stones, include amber, which is a fossil of tree resin, as well as pearls and corals. To be considered a gemstone, the stone must be one of the 2,000 identified naturally occurring minerals that are valued for their rarity, beauty, and durability. Out of these 2,000 identified minerals, only around 100 of them are actually used as gemstones, and a few 16 of them have achieved a notability of importance. These minerals, though one may supply more than one gemstone, include beryl, chrysoberyl, corundum, diamond, feldspar, garnet, jade, lazurite, olivine, opal, quartz, spinel, topaz, tourmaline, turquoise, and zircon. As an example, the mineral Beryl supplies the gemstones emerald and aquamarine, and corundum supplies ruby and sapphire gemstones. Before being used for jewelry, all of these minerals will have to first be cut and polished in order for them to be usable.

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In an ad that ran in the Washington Post, Tiffany and Co. gave the U.S. Congress kudos for passing legislation that would ban the importation of all gemstones from Myanmar (formerly Burma) into the United States, including those that were processed in a third-party country.

Federal lawmakers had already passed legislation in 2003 that embargoed gemstones from Myanmar as a response to human rights violations by the government’s ruling military junta, which profits from state-run gem auctions. But the new legislation closes a U.S. Customs loophole that allowed the Burmese stones into this country if they were processed somewhere other than Myanmar, such as Thailand, which is known for cutting gemstones and using them to manufacture jewelry.

An estimated 90 percent of the world’s rubies originate in Myanmar and are known in the trade as “blood rubies.”

Tiffany and Co., in accordance with its corporate standards and practices, stopped the purchase of all rubies mined in Myanmar in 2003, and has continued its moratorium on Burmese rubies since then, despite the loophole.

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Besides their obvious magic and beauty, gems have a vast heritage of healing power. All cultures, religions and times valued gems to prevent illness, misfortune, and to positively influence the spirit of the wearer. From the shamans of American Indians to the astrologers of Hindu cultures, from the headmen of the Celts to the ghost men of the Aborigines, they all have used stones to cure, heal and protect. Formerly a secret that was passed on from generation to generation, this knowledge has now become a worldwide movement which, across languages and cultures, is dedicated to the re-enforcement of our spiritual self-consciousness. I frequently get asked: “How could a gemstone possibly heal a sickness?” It is not the sickness that gets healed, but the host. Those who dismiss the old wisdom of healers either think science can (or should) explain all there is, or they have never been really sick (despite, or especially because of modern medicine). To start with, a gemstone influences the light pattern of your body and the energy of your aura. Depending on your constellation, your karma or your walk of life a color might be too dominant or underrepresented in you and thus disturb your inner balance. Keeping the colors of your aura in a state of equilibrium is important for your ability to keep off negative thoughts and add positively to your karma. Though we have yet to understand the connection between color and the human brain, quantum physics has come up with a first notion of how colors may influence us on a atomic level.

Here are the basics, as far as we understand them today: Matter is not as solid as it appears to us. In fact, matter can also be understood as energy stored in form of particles. All energy reveals itself in different wave forms such as heat, light or radiation. Color too is a wave form. A gemstone may thus be seen as stored energy (matter) of a certain wave length. Human emotions and physical processes are based on energy and information, which also is transferred in wave forms. Hence, colors may have a direct physical influence on the human mind and body.

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Sapphires are beautiful gemstones that come in many colors, but are most famous for their blue color. Sapphires come in cognac, colorless, green, orange, peach, pink, purple, violet, white, and yellow (a red sapphire would be called a ruby).On the Mohs scale of hardness, sapphire ranks a 9, highest after diamonds. It is a very durable gemstone and perfect for everyday accessories, such as rings or bracelets.Sapphires are found in Kashmir, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Tanzania, Madagascar, Australia and Montana.

It has been a common practice to heat-treat sapphires. Heat-treating sapphires helps improve clarity and color. The process is permanent and stable.

Blue sapphire is September’s birthstone and is recommended for the 5th, 23rd and 45th wedding anniversaries.

Care

Sapphire jewelry can be cleaned with soapy water or a commercial solvent and brush. Mechanical cleaners are safe, except for heavily included gems.

Always store your sapphire rings, sapphire earrings, necklaces and other sapphire jewelry in a fabric-lined box to keep it safe from other pieces of jewelry. Never wear your jewelry when doing rough work or working with harsh chemicals.

With these tips, your beautiful sapphires, blue or not, should last you for many years.

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Birthstones since the ancient times have been the circle of concentration for most of the people. People in those times believed that they have some magical effect on their lives including bringing good and bad luck, protection from diseases etc. Whether birthstones did something like this during those days or not, but the tradition is still live with a huge number of followers. Many of the people in contemporary times still have same concepts.

The traditional link of birthstones with Zodiac signs is also the product of same historic era, but a modern concept maintains this link according to calendar months. And according to this classification each month has it’s own unique stone that possesses some properties, which have some effect on the person born during that particular month.

Whether it’s based on Zodiac or monthly linking of birthstones, believers love to wear such stones in the form of jewelry, probably to keep the ancient concept alive or there’s some science behind this. Ring is mostly and often earrings are the best choice for keeping birthstones in them.

Not only wearing birthstone but also presenting an item of jewelry set with their birthstone is a considered as a heart touching a delicate gift. According to most of the jewelers, birthstone pendants or birthstone brooches are most common gift items in this concern.

Presenting a birthstone to someone or wearing it both if considered especially with the meaning associated with historic thought makes it special. And when it comes to a quality, no other gem can give this much level of association with beautiful sentiments behind the stone.