The world’s love for diamonds started in India as early as the 4th century BC. By the 1400s they became fashionable accesories to Europe’s elite. Diamond’s splendor has been appreciated for centuries, but there was not much scientific knowledge about it before the twentieth century. Since then, diamond knowledge has grown steadily, with research by chemists, physicists, geologists, mineralogists, and oceanographers.

Diamond is the hardest material on earth and is the only gem made of a single element. Typically about 99.95% of carbon. It forms deep in the earth under extreme heat and pressure. Diamonds in the normal color range are colorless through light yellow and are described using the industry’s D-to-Z color-grading scale.

Birthstone for April and 60 th and 75th wedding anniversaries

While fancy color diamonds have traditionally been a small part of the diamond business, their popularity and availability have grown in the past several decades. Only one in 10,000 diamonds has a fancy color. The most well-known historical and current sources of fancy color diamonds are India, South Africa, and Australia. Other diamond mine locations, including Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, and Indonesia, also produce fancy color diamonds. The 45.52-carat Fancy Deep grayish blue Hope Diamond is the world’s most famous gem.

Fancy color diamonds, on the other hand, are yellow and brown diamonds that exhibit color beyond the Z range, or diamonds that exhibit any other color face-up. These rare specimens come in every color of the spectrum, including, most importantly, blue, green, pink, and red. Large, vivid fancy color diamonds are extremely rare and very valuable.

Birthstone for April and 10 th and 60th wedding anniversaries

Ruby is one of the most historically significant colored stones. The name ruby comes from the Latin word ruber which means red. It is a symbol of passion. In the ancient language of Sanskrit, ruby is called ratnaraj, or “king of precious stones.”

It is one variety of the corundum mineral species. Some of the most renowned rubies were formed in places like Myanmar, the Himalayas and northern Vietnam .

Birthstone for July and the gem for 15 th and 40 th anniversaries.

Traditionnaly sapphires symbolize nobilty, truth, sincerity and faithfulness. For centuries, blue sapphires have been associated with royalty and romance.

Sapphires are mostly known for being blue, however they come in almost every color such as violet, yellow, orange, green, purple and pink. They are a variety of the corundum family which rubies also belong to. Both blue and fancy sapphires come from a variety of exotic sources including Madagascar, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Australia.

Birthstone for September and the gem for 5th and 45th anniversaries

The name emerald comes from the ancient Greek word for green, “smaragdus”. The first known emerald mines were in Egypt, dating from at least 330 BC into the 1700s. Cleopatra was known to adore Emeralds and used them in her royal adornments.

Emerald is the green to bluish green variety of Beryl.

Birthstone for May and gem for 20th and 35th wedding anniversaries.

The name “aquamarine” is derived from two Latin words: aqua, meaning “water,” and marina, meaning “of the sea”. It has been said that the mineral beryl gives the wearer protection against foes in battle or litigation. It makes the wearer unconquerable and amiable, and also quickens the intellect.

Aquamarine is the green-blue to blue variety of the mineral beryl. Aquamarine crystals are known to be large in size and relatively clean and well-formed, making them particularly valuable to collectors of mineral specimens.

In the early 1900s, Morganite was named after J.P Morgan who was one of the biggest gem collectors back then.This gemstone is a variety of the Beryl family, which makes it the sister gem of Aquamarine and Emerald.

Morganite’s color is usually sublte pink and has a variety of tones. It was originally found in Madagascar. Nowaydays, it is mined in coutries like Brazil, Mozambique, Namibia and even the US.

Thousands of years ago, red garnet necklaces adorned the necks of Egypt’s pharaohs, and were entombed with their mummified corpses as prized possessions for the afterlife.

Garnets are a set of closely related minerals that form a group, resulting in gemstones in almost every color. With a rich palette of colors, red, green, orange, pinkish orange, deeply saturated purplish red, and even some blues. Red garnet is one of the most common and widespread of gems. Rhodolite is a beautiful purple-red garnet.

Garnets are a set of closely related minerals that form a group, resulting in gemstones in almost every color. With a rich palette of colors, red, green, orange, pinkish orange, deeply saturated purplish red, and even some blues. Tsavorite is the green version of garnet.

Tanzanite is relatively new to the colored stone galaxy. As the most common story of the tanzanite mining boom goes, in 1967 a Masai tribesman stumbled upon a cluster of highly transparent, intense violet-to-blue crystals in Tanzania.

Tanzanite is the violet blue to blue violet variety of the mineral zoisite. It is mined commercially only in one area of the world: the Merelani Hills of Tanzania, which is where it gets its name.

Spinel is a good candidate for the title of “History’s Most Underappreciated It has long been mistaken for ruby by emperors and monarchs. Many of the famous “rubies” of history were actually spinels. The famous 14th century Black Prince’s Ruby in the British Imperial Crown is actually a red spinel.

Spinel offers a range of hues, from orange to intense “stoplight” red, vibrant pink, and all shades of purple, blue, and violet through bluish green.

People have probably used tourmaline as a gem for centuries, but until the development of modern mineralogy, they identified it as some other stone (ruby, sapphire, emerald, and so forth) based on its coloring.

Tourmaline comes in a variety of different colors. In fact, it has one of the widest color range of any gems species.

Many scholars think the stone’s name comes from the Arabic word zarkun, meaning “cinnabar” or “vermilion.” Others believe the source is the Persian word zargun, or “gold colored.” Considering zircon’s color range, either derivation seems possible. Blue zircon was a particular favorite in Victorian times, when fine gems were often featured in English estate jewelry dating from the 1880s. Gemologist George Kunz—Tiffany’s famed gem buyer—was a notable zircon advocate. Zircon occurs in an array of colors. Its wide and varied palette of yellow, green, red, reddish brown, and blue hues makes it a favorite among collectors as well as informed consumers. Zircon found in Australia is the oldest mineral on earth: 4.4 billion years old.