We travel to all the major gem and jewelry shows in North America as well as make special expeditions overseas to the Gem centers of Asia and South America. We can access the world's finest gems, through our many contacts, giving you the chance to have a one-in-a-million stone at a reasonable cost.
We have several lapidaries who can recut and repolish chips and nicks out of your diamonds or colored gemstones. For those of you with an older cut diamond - the 1930's and earlier - you may want your stone cut to modern proportions so it shows more brilliance. Or perhaps you have a modern stone that could be recut to better proportions to bring out more sparkle and brightness.
Over time, colored stones begin to show wear or abrasion around the facet edges, making it look a little duller in those areas. These stones can also be repolished and refaceted to revive their original luster.
Did you know that the color of many of the gems has been enhanced and it is an accepted trade practice? In this high tech world the gem merchants discovered that if they heated or irradiated gemstones they could produce a permanent, more desirable color than the original color. Without these practices the supply for beautiful stones could never meet the demand. In the Sapphire world about 99% of all stones are heated to some degree, whereas blue topaz wouldn't exist without some degree of irradiation and heat treatment. Likewise, Tanzanite starts off as a brown stone that changes to the glorious purplish-blue color with heating. We factually disclose these practices and acknowledge the good they have done for the jewelry and gem world by bringing us some incredible color. Below is a list of the common enhancements we encounter. Most enhancements are stable. Many are not detectable in any way but we assume them to have been enhanced as it is the common treatment for many gems.
Remember that aquamarine means "sea water." Until the last 40 years, aquamarine was a greenish color with a blue cast. After heating, the yellow component is driven off leaving just the blue color that is so popular today.
Because many emeralds have surface reaching feathers that show up as a dusty look, a colorless oil is vacuumed into the stone to make the feathers less apparent. In time the oil can dry out but can be reoiled to restore it's transparency. Sometimes an epoxy filler is used as well.
Many of the fine fine rubies have "silk" in them giving them a slightly sleepy appearance. If there is a lot of silk then we get a stone with a star. When heated the silk dissolves into the crystal lattice leaving the stone more transparent and sometimes slightly darker in color.
Heating can darken a stone that is quite light, again by dissolving the silk (which is actually titanium). Conversely they can heat the dark Australian and Thailand sapphires and lighten them up slightly and take away the greenish color they might have. Sapphires can also have a star which can be induced by heating or removed by heating.
Most tourmalines do not change with treatment. The red stones may be irradiated to darken the color and the Paraiba neon blue gems can be heat treated.
Garnet are generally not treated. They have larger crystals inside of them that would fracture upon heating. Garnets come in a wide range of colors that occur naturally.
Topaz-heat and Irradiation-Blue topaz came about, through science, in the early 1980's. Rarely does it occur naturally as a blue. It begins as a colorless stone. Pink, Yellow, and Sherry or Imperial topaz is heated to intensify the color.
Coming out of the ground as a brownish crystal, heating reveals the beautiful blues and purples that has made the stone a very popular choice.
We look for that stone that "talks" to us. We want saturated color-something that is deep, rich, intriguing. You want your colored gem to be as dark as possible without having blackness to it. As soon as the stone gets black in it, the value decreases, as does the beauty. If you were to imagine the best colors for gems you can think of jello red rubies, or Palmolive green emeralds, windex blue paraiba tourmalines, or cornflower blue sapphires- all are dark in tone but do not have blackness. Color is the most important factor affecting the value of a gemstone.
Why is blue sapphire so popular? Well, part of it is the wonderful lore and traditions that go with the sapphire, so it is a well know stone. Another is the fact that we wear blue jeans with everything so we are comfortable wearing blue gems with everything. The other important fact is that 50% of us chose blue as our favorite color.
Demand is another important factor. Who decides about the colors of the fashion seasons? Surprisingly enough, there is a company called Pantone that has a group of fashion advisors who come up with the styles, colors, and textures for each of the fashion seasons, sometimes two years in advance. They drive what color palettes we'll find in the fashion world in the upcoming seasons. Their decisions also drive what jewelry we will design to go with those fashions. Soft and silky leads us to micro pave. Blazers and jackets brings us to brooches and pins. Long hair, short hair, long skirts, short shirts, all these trends drive the jewelry fashion industry.
Unlike diamonds, colored stone clarity grades are far less consequential. As gemologists we love some inclusions in a gem because it tells us that it is natural versus man-made, or it can tell us the country of origin of the stone. Most gems that you purchase are free from eye visible inclusions. For some stones such as emerald, pink and red tourmaline, and gems with cat's eyes or stars, it is acceptable to have visible inclusions.
When it comes to colored gems the stone really has to appeal to you. When we look for stones we always go for a stone that is lively - it has sparkle, it gives something back to you every time you look at it. This has everything to do with how well the gem is cut-it's proportions of length to width to depth. If a stone is flat, or as we call it shallow, what usually happens is the light leaks through the center of the stone creating a window where it looks lackluster, so just the edges of the stone sparkle. A gem needs sufficient depth to be able to put some facets on the bottom of the stone that will reflect light back to you, making you feel its liveliness. Stones that were polished quickly often have lots and lots of polishing lines (small, abundant, scratches) that can also dampen the brightness of the stone.
In the colored stone world, cut can also refer to the shape of the stone. The shape a stone takes is often dictated by the shape of the rough material the stone was cut from. They don't want to waste rough to cut a round stone when they can get a far larger oval or cushion shape.