Gems HQ

What do we know about gem stones? The usually are precious and semiprecious and together with platinum, gold or silver are the parts of jewelry. Among the precious stones we can see diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Traditionally diamonds are the most valuable between this “big four”. There are however less pricy precious gem stones like topaz, beryl, zircon etc. Among the semi precious gems we can meet the following ones: amethyst, opal, aquamarine, garnet, turquoise, jade, onyx, agate, lapis, malachite and lazuli.

However there is third category of gem stones – the stones of organic origin. They are ambers, pearls, corals. Amber is a fossil tree resin and is as valuable as animal origin corals which are considered gemstones too. It is interesting that there are more than 2000 minerals known, but only about 100 are considered gem stones, and 16 are considered valuable. By the way – did you know that some minerals provide more then one precious stone? For example from beryl you can get both emeralds and aquamarines.

What do we like gem stones for? Of course for their beauty. It may be gem stone in color or lack of it, in the some cases, extreme limpidity and “fire” can provide the attraction. Gem stones must also be durable to fight the wearing and tearing during constant handling.

However treated gemstones exist. These are the gems where its colors are artificially enhanced and therefore its value is increased. Among such treatments most common are heat treatment, irradiation, staining. So agate is stained in a variety of colors, but turquoise is stained to imitate such gem stone as opal and jasper can be stained to imitate Lapis Lazuli stone. Heat treatment is the oldest treatment known. Even our ancestors heat treated quartz to obtain topaz gems. Also some brownish zircon may become bright blue or even colorless, yellow topaz may become pink one, slightly colored chalcedony may become carnelian red, and some amethysts or rubies are more evenly colored. Irradiation treatment also was invented for gem stones’ color changes. However there is a great drawback in making colorless diamonds green or rose quartz brown. These changes are not permanent and what is more the gem stones may become radio active.

Along with gem stones that have natural origin started to appear so called synthetic gems. These are the stones created in the laboratory conditions. They could be rubies, emeralds, sapphires and even diamonds. There are currently used only two methods of synthetic gem stone fabrication – one involving crystal growth from solution and the other crystal growth from melts.

In ancient times and even today gem stones were used not only as jewelry attributes but as parts of amulets that had special powers. The diamond was believed to give its owner more strength in battle and to protect him against evil magic. Ruby was thought to bring its wearer lands and titles, to bestow virtue and to protect against seduction. Some of such beliefs still exist in the modern practice of wearing birthstones.