speaking of gem geeking…

As long as I”m gem geeking, my latest addition to Laurie’s collection:

Another gem we’ve both really become enamoured with is the Mandarin garnet. In its best color, it’s Fanta Orange. It’s a sub-type of the Spessartite, which is a red garnet. The Mandarin is a single-source gem — there’s only one mine producing them, and it’s increasingly looking like it’s mined out (and what good caliber stones are being found seem to be going to collectors in japan). I’ve been keeping my eyes open for an appropriate purchase, and ran into this — a bit over 2 carats, in a gorgeous setting. I gave it to Laurie a couple of weeks ago…

The Tsavorite in her wedding band is another single source gem, out of a mine in Tsavo park. I love it because it looks like what most emeralds dream of being. It’s a gorgeous gem, but rare over 1 carat. You might see some top-end columbian emeralds get this clean, but you can’t afford them.

And for what it’s worth, all of the diamonds I used are sourced through cutters in India, and as far as we were able to prove, not blood diamonds.

The last couple of weeks exhausts my jewelry budget for a while (I also picked up a few pieces of dendritic quartz recently for use as paperweights), but I have to admit, I’ve seen some really nice pink sapphires recently…

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  • http://weblog.burningbird.net Shelley

    That is a beautiful stone, and a very nice setting. Before I sold my collection, had a spessarite and a tsavorite, the former on very pretty white matrix, and latter a loose, uncut stone.