SG: 3.98-4.00 RI: 1.76-1.77 Hardness: 9 Crystal Habit: Trigonal
Kashmir and Burma Sapphire
When it comes to the finest gem quality blue sapphires in the world, nothing can compare with the best stones from Kashmir in northern India, and its neighbor to the east, Burma. Sapphires were first discovered in Kashmir around the year 1880, in the region known as Padar. Mining activity went on for several decades, but the finest material came out within the first thirty years. By contrast, Burma has been producing sapphires from several localities for well over 1,000 years.
The original discovery in Kashmir was made by a band of traders from Afghanistan on their way to Delhi. Originally traded for a few bags of salt, they were eventually estimated to be worth $3,000,000 in the 1930's. Today they would be priceless.
Due to the shape of the natural sapphire crystals from Kashmir, many gems have a rather deep cut. It is common to see fine Kashmir blue sapphires cut as a “sugarloaf” cabochon to retain weight. It is the presence of very fine and evenly distributed silk that gives Kashmir sapphires their famous velvety look.
Burma, which is today called Myanmar, has several important locations that produce sapphire. The most famous is the Mogok gem tract which has a rich history of production dating back several hundred years.
Sapphires from Burma were not recognized for their superior quality until the 1950's, after which their value and demand has risen dramatically.
But what exactly is it that makes blue sapphires form Kashmir and Burma so superior to gems from any other location? In visual terms it is what is known as color saturation. Burmese and Kashmir sapphires possess the very highest concentration of blue color possible. The only way to properly understand this is to see the very best of Kashmir or Burmese sapphires side by side with the best from any other source in the world.
To illustrate this point, Kashmir and Burmese fine blue sapphires consistently yield the highest prices at the top international auction houses around the world. The record is currently held by a Burmese gem that sold for over US$45,000 per carat in 1988. So, proof of Burmese or Kashmir origin has become a critical point in determining the value of the gem being sold.
Modern gemological technology has made it possible to determine the origin of a gemstone through sophisticated testing methods. The demand of the marketplace has put a premium value on gemstones from these localities, so laboratories have stepped in and provided the gem trade with certificates of origin, a sort of pedigree for certain gemstones. Without this pedigree, or proof of origin, one can not expect to fetch the highest price possible for a blue sapphire, no matter how high its quality.
Production from Kashmir has been virtually nothing for the past several decades, making fine sapphires from this source nearly impossible to find. Burma however, does continue to produce excellent quality sapphires to this day, but in very small quantities.
Ceylon Sapphire
When you hear the name Ceylon, you would immediately think of beaches lined with palm trees, tea plantations and of course, their famous lovely blue sapphires. Now known as Sri Lanka, this island nation has been supplying the world with some very fine gemstones for the past 2,000 years, and it is one of the oldest sources in recorded history.
Marco Polo visited Ceylon on his world tour. He wrote about the wonderful variety of sapphires and rubies found there. After hearing the news, the great Kaan sent a group of his ambassadors to meet with the King of the island. They tried to buy the largest and finest of their gems, but with no success. The King of Ceylon would not sell them because the best gemstones had been passed down from his ancestors.
To this day, Sri Lanka is still one of the world’s largest sources of fine quality blue sapphire. It is a place where one can regularly find excellent gems over the 100 carat mark. Many of the famous large sapphires in museums around the world came from this gemstone rich tropical island. Sri Lanka is also a very well known source for fine quality star sapphires.
The classic “cornflower blue” is what Sri Lanka is best known for. The finest of the sapphires from Ceylon are a very even and intense pure blue color, with a high degree of saturation. This bright and medium toned shade of blue is highly prized around the world, and is considered to be far superior to the often overly dark and inky colors commonly found in Australia and Thailand.
The area know as Ratnapura sits right in the middle of the gem producing area of Sri Lanka. Surrounding this town one can see hundreds of small to large hand dug pits where the gemming (Sri Lankan term for gem mining) is going on. The government has put a total ban on mechanized mining, thereby assuring a tight supply, stable prices, and a source of income for many future generations of poor indigenous laborers.
The clever artisans of Ceylon discovered centuries ago that the application of heat could sometimes improve the color or the clarity of certain gems. They would coat a stone in mud, which protected the gem and evened out the heat. Then they would place them in a simple charcoal fire. With the use of blow pipes they would intensify and direct the flame on the ball of mud until it glowed bright orange from the heat.
This process would be carried on anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. The ball would then be allowed to cool. When it was finally broken open, the owner would inspect the gem for improvement. The lucky ones wound up with a stronger colored or a cleaner looking gem. The unlucky ones found either no change, or sometimes the stones even suffered damage during the process. Today this common technology has been refined so that there is a high degree of success.
The true connoisseur of gems is often willing to pay a considerable amount to purchase that perfect cornflower blue gem of their dreams. So when you start looking for that blue sapphire of your dreams, you will know to ask your jeweler for a cornflower blue gem from Ceylon, which you now know is called Sri Lanka.
Madagascar Sapphire
In the early 1990's, a new source of gem quality sapphire stunned the international gemstone market. Madagascar, a large island nation off the south-east coast of the African continent, became the hottest news in the precious gem industry. With just a few years of development, several new mine sources began producing commercial to top gem quality sapphires the likes of which had not been seen for over a century.
Buyers from around the globe flocked to the new finds. Once small villages of a few dozen mud huts soon became wild west boomtowns with 10's of thousands of new inhabitants. Most of the newcomers were itinerant miners looking to strike it rich in the pay dirt of the Madagascar wilderness. Dirt poor farmers could become instantly wealthy by local standards with the find of just one exceptional rough sapphire crystal.
These new African deposits have been a boon to sapphire traders everywhere in the world. There is now a whole new range of beautiful blue gemstones available to gem dealers, jewelers and collectors, many of which are often compared with Ceylon sapphire. The color saturation, clarity, evenness and purity of color occasionally rival the finest of Burma and even the elusive sapphires of Kashmir.
Production from Kashmir has been virtually nothing for the past several decades, making fine sapphires from this source nearly impossible to find. Burma however, does continue to produce excellent quality sapphires to this day, but in very small quantities.
The wonderful advantage to modern day sapphire lovers is the relative availability of Madagascar gems at affordable prices. Madagascar has made the dream of owning a Kashmir look-alike possible to a wide range of gem lovers around the world.
Star Sapphire
The presence of a star is the most amazing phenomena encountered in the world of colored gemstones. This optical occurrence is quite rare, being only found in a very small percentage of the blue sapphires mined around the world. Throughout history, and to this day, the two sources producing the best quality blue star sapphires are Burma and Sri Lanka.
A star is formed by the abundant presence of a naturally occurring mineral inclusion in sapphire, known as rutile. This rutile is often found in very fine long and slender white crystals which strongly reflect light off their surface. The common gemological term for these needle like crystals is silk.
To cause a star, the rutile needles form in parallel and tightly packed groups. The reflection off of each group of crystals forms a straight line which appears to float on the surface of the stone. There are always three groups of crystals which intersect at 60 degree angles from each other. The three lines formed connect in the center to form the appearance of a 6 ray star.
Sri Lanka is the source of the biggest fine quality blue star sapphires in the world. Several famous museums have giant star sapphires from Ceylon that exceed 100 carats in weight. These include the Star of Artaban, a 316 carat blue star in the Smithsonian Institute, and the Star of India, a 563 carat fine blue star that is on display in the American Museum of Natural History. An unnamed 393 carat blue star owned by the State Gem Corporation of Sri Lanka is believed by many to be the finest blue star sapphire of its size in the world.
Big stars from Burma are considerably more scarce than those from Ceylon. There is only one found in any of the major museums of the world. It is the 330 carat Star of Asia, a 330 carat blue-violet colored gem found in the Smithsonian Institute. While Burma does not produce so many stars of exceptional size, it is generally considered to be the source of the finest color.
The common practice of heat treatment to improve the color and clarity of sapphires also removes much or all of the star causing silk. Because of this, fine quality blue star sapphires are becoming more and more difficult to find in the colored gemstone market.
A relative newcomer to the star sapphire arena are Trapiche star sapphires from Burma. Previously found only in the beryl family, notably emerald, there has recently been a very small production of these gemstone anomalies from the Mogok region. They feature a stationary six ray star pattern radiating out from the center of the gem. This star pattern is not asterism caused by rutile "silk" as in common star sapphires. Most Trapiche sapphires are found in dark and light gray colors. Very few have a distinct blue and white pattern. Trapiche sapphires are considered a very rare collectors item, and finer pieces are quickly reaching Trapiche emerald price ranges
Rarity and beauty are two wonderful reasons to own a fine quality blue star sapphire. Whether you choose a star from Sri Lanka or one from Burma, you are sure to find a unique treasure to be enjoyed for a lifetime.
Fancy Colored Sapphire
Sapphire is often considered to be synonymous with the color blue. However, sapphire is also found in every other color of the rainbow except for red, which is called ruby. The other colors of sapphire can be just as beautiful and rare, or even rarer than blue, but they are usually less expensive. Yellow, orange, green, lavender, purple and other pastel shades can all be found in the wide range of fancy sapphire colors.
Until the advent of modern gemology, no one realized that ruby and sapphire were actually the same gem mineral. When the knowledge became widespread people decided to call all gemstones of the mineral corundum either sapphire, or if red, ruby. But pink is really just light shade of red so we have a modern dilemma. Is pink corundum ruby or sapphire?
The International Colored Gemstone Association has passed a resolution that the light shades of the red hue should be included in the category ruby since it was too difficult to legislate where red ended and pink began. Historically, pink corundum from Burma was categorized as ruby. In practice today, pink shades are now known either as pink ruby or pink sapphire.
The most valuable fancy sapphire is a orange-pink or pinkish-orange variety known as "padparadscha" and named after the lotus blossom. Padparadscha sapphires are very rare and the exact definition has always been a matter of debate. Different dealers and different laboratories around the world disagree on the exact color described by this term. Some dealers even argue that the term should not be limited to the pastel shades of Sri Lankan sapphires but should also include the more fiery shades of reddish-orange from the Umba Valley in Tanzania.
Padparadscha sapphires sell at a premium, nearing the price for fine rubies. Although the exact description is debated, the beauty and rarity of these rare gemstones is not, with their delicately blended shades of fresh salmon and sunsets. Other very popular shades of fancy sapphires are yellows, bright oranges, lavender and purples, bluish and yellowish green color.
Fancy yellow sapphire is probably the best known and most popular variety worldwide. Unheated and loupe clean stones are sought after for their Vedic Hindu significance where as the richer orangey shades are prized in Asia for their whisky or cognac likeness.
Generally, the more clear and vivid the color, the more valuable the fancy sapphire. If the color is in the pastel range, the clarity should be good. In lighter tones inclusions tend to be more noticeable and the trade usually prefers gemstones to be cleaner with fewer visible inclusions. In a lighter colored gemstone, the cut is also more important. It should reflect light back evenly across the face of the stone, making it lively and brilliant. With darker and more intense colors, the cut is not as critical because the color creates its own impact.
Whatever fancy colored sapphires you choose, you will certainly find a beautiful, durable and desirable gem worthy of wearing in fine jewelry. As supplies dwindle and demand increases your fancy colored sapphire will appreciate in both value and desirability.
