Tanzanite... Blue Suicide

Mined only in Tanzania, in the shadows of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzanite’s beauty, rarity, and durability rivals other gemstones. The first gemstone added to the birthstone list since 1912, Tanzanite was first discovered by Masai herders who picked up the beautiful blue crystals after they were caught in a fire set by lightning. The fire turned the normally brown zoisite crystals (mineral tanzanite) into the exotic blue and purple hues that caught the attention of the jewelry market. Tiffany & Co named and rapidly promoted the stone, honoring its origins by calling it Tanzanite instead of by its mineral name blue zoisite (which they thought sounded too much like blue suicide).

Tanzanite is trichroic which means that it shows three different colors when viewed in different directions. It is rarely a pure blue and often has an overcast of purple and bronze hues when looked at from different angles, adding depths to its color and an assortment of tonal qualities. Typically bronze when found in the ground, gentle heating deepens the color in the stone and brings out the velvety blue and purple colors. Tanzanite occurs in other color varieties including yellow, golden-brown and green.

Tourmaline: a dazzling array of colors… it can shock you (literally)

October has two birth stone options… Pink Tourmaline and Opal

Tourmaline-

Tourmaline’s name means multi-colored, and rightfully so. These October birthstones come in every color of the rainbow, and even bi and tri-colored, where two or more colors appear together in the same gemstone. No two tourmalines are exactly alike. Tourmalines are believed to be a compassion fostering stone, also bringing composure and enlightenment, to those who wear it.

A deposit of tourmaline was found on Mt. Mica in Maine by two men who just happened to see a green crystal at the base of an uprooted tree, who didn’t know what it was. None of the locals could identify it, so it was sent to Yale University, where it was identified as tourmaline. Tourmaline was the first gem to be mined in such abundance in post-native North America. Mt. Mica tourmalines are particularly noted for their distinct green color resembling Granny Smith Apples.

Tourmaline’s many Varieties:

- Maine Tourmaline- Granny Smith green

- Watermelon Tourmaline- a bi-color stone containing green and pink tourmaline side by side.

- Rubelite- intense red color that stays the same color in both artificial and natural light.

- Paraíba Tourmaline- wasn’t discovered until 1987, commonly a bright blue to blue-green tourmaline

Tourmaline offers an enticing rainbow of options for your jewelry wardrobe. Cranberry red, hot magenta, bubblegum pink, peach and orange, canary yellow, mint, grass and forest green, ocean blue, violet, and even bicolor pink and green stones: tourmaline is all these and more.

Tourmaline

Folklore/Myths & Facts:

According to ancient Egyptians, tourmaline, on its way up from the center of the earth passed over a rainbow. In doing so, it acquired all the colors.

The Empress Dowager Tz’u Hsi, the last empress of China, loved pink tourmaline above all other gemstones. She imported tons of tourmaline from Southern California in the early twentieth century, creating a gem rush in San Diego during the period.

It is believed that tourmaline protects its wearer from many dangers, such as falling.

Scientists are as interested in tourmalines as designers are. It’s peculiar that tourmaline can become electrically charged when rapidly heated and cooled. Even more peculiar is that when electrically charged, they will demonstrate pyro-electricity (i.e. having opposite charges at either end of the stone). This property has also made tourmaline the latest miracle ingredient in moisturizers: manufacturers claim the gem helps pull pollutants from your skin.

The Dutch were the first to bring tourmaline to Europe. Well aware of its heat conductivity, they would use a heated piece of tourmaline to heat their meerschaum pipes.

How to Care for Tourmaline:

Tourmaline is durable and suitable for everyday wear. Clean with mild dish soap: use a toothbrush to scrub behind the stone where dust can collect.

Opals Play of Color

Opals

The name means to see a change of color; opals have an unusual optical effect of shifting spectral hues described as play of color. The birthstone for October, opal is revered as a symbol of hope, fidelity and purity and reveals the colorful attributes of those who wear it.

Opals are a chameleon of stones, encompassing the essence of every gemstone in one and date back to prehistoric times.

Opals are described according to their transparency and body color. While experts divide gem opals into many different categories, the main types (according to the American Gem Trade Association) are:

• White opal – translucent to semi-translucent with play-of-color against a white or light gray body color.
• Black opal – translucent to opaque with play-of-color against a black or other dark body color.
• Fire Opal – transparent to translucent with brown, yellow, orange, or red body color. This material, which often does not show play-of-color, is also known as “Mexican opal,” “gold opal,” or “sun opal.”

Play-of-color occurs because opal is made up of sub-microscopic spheres stacked in a grid-like pattern, like layers of ping-pong balls in a box. This structure breaks up light into spectral colors. The colors you see depend on the sizes of the spheres. Opal is a non-crystallized silica, which is a mineral found near the earth’s surface in areas where ancient geothermal hot springs once existed. As the hot springs dried up, layers of the silica, combined with water, were deposited into the cracks and cavities of the bedrock, forming Opal.

Opal Peacock Brooch on display at the Smithsonian

Because opal contains varying amounts of water, it is a soft stone and if exposed to changes in heat and pressure, the appearance can change. When water evaporates out of an opal, the stone can appear to be slightly smaller and the stress

Opal is a soft stone, easily altered in appearance by changes in heat and pressure. This mineral contains varying amounts of water within it that determine the appearance of the gemstone. When water evaporates out of an opal, the stone appears slightly smaller and the stress of the evaporation creates cracks on it.

Folklore:

Prized for its unique ability to refract and reflect specific wavelengths of light, the Opal was also called “Cupid Paederos” by the Romans, meaning a child beautiful as love.

Arabic legends say it falls from the heavens in flashes of lightning. The ancient Greeks believed opals gave their owners the gift of prophecy and guarded them from disease. Europeans have long considered the gem a symbol of hope, purity, and truth.

Some people think it’s unlucky for anyone born in another month to wear an opal, but that particular superstition comes from a novel written in the 1800s (Anne of Geierstein by Sir Walter Scott) and not from ancient belief or experience. In fact, throughout most of history, opal has been regarded as the luckiest and most magical of all gems because it can show all colors. Once, it was thought to have the power to preserve the life and color of blond hair.

Sapphires, taste the rainbow

While the name sapphire comes from the Latin word for blue, sapphirus, this precious stone comes in a whole spectrum of colors including violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink and even gray, brown, black and colorless. Red variations of the sapphire mineral (corundum) is exclusively ruby. Next to diamond, Sapphire is the second hardest known natural substance (next to diamond), with a hardness of 9 on the mohs scale, it is ideal for all types of jewelry, especially rings.

Formed billions of years ago, deep below the earth’s crust and in the mantle, conditions of high temperature and pressure formed corundum, the sapphire mineral (rubies are red corundum). Sapphires are a very desirable gem due to its color, hardness, durability and its luster. The most valuable color of sapphire is known as Kashmir sapphire and is a cornflower blue. Corundum with asterism (inclusions of tiny, slender, parallel Rutile needles) in the stone are called star sapphires because of the six (sometimes 12) point star that appears on the stone.

Sapphires come from Thailand, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Tanzania and Australia; other sources include Montana, Cambodia, Nigeria, Kenya and China. The most famous sources for sapphires however are the Kashmir region of India and Burma (Myanmar).

There have been many famous sapphires in history including on the crown jewels of England and most famously, the Star of India which is 536 carats. About three hundred years ago in Sri Lanka, the star sapphire (which is almost flawless and had stars on both sides) was discovered and later donated to the American Museum of Natural History by JP Morgan where it was later stolen.

The story of its theft adds intrigue to the stone’s fame. Thieves discovered that the valuable gems in the Museum of Natural History were very poorly guarded, and they unlocked a bathroom window during the museum hours. When they returned after the institution was closed for the night, sure enough, the window was still open, and they climbed right in. The Star of India was the only gem that had an alarm, and as luck would have it, the battery on the alarm was dead. The thieves made off with the gems and were later recovered in a locker in a bus station Miami.

Folklore about Sapphires

The ancient Persians believed that the Earth was imbedded into a gigantic blue Sapphire stone. For the Buddhists, a Sapphire represented friendship and loyalty. For others, Sapphire is the stone of prosperity, preventing terror and poverty in men. During the 18th century, Sapphire was used to test female loyalty, changing its color if its wearer was unfaithful.

The movie the Titanic featured a fictional sapphire necklace which was based on the famous Hope Diamond. Princess Diana’s engagement ring had a sapphire center stone and Queen Elizabeth has a sapphire engagement ring as well. Other celebrities wearing sapphires include: Joan Crawford, Penelope Cruz, Debra Messing, and Jean Harlow.

Heart of the Ocean

Cleaning a sapphire: use soapy water or commercial solvent and a brush.

The Poor Man's Emerald

Peridot, often referred to as the “poor man’s emerald”, is a gem that is formed in volcanoes and has been cherished since the time of the ancient Egyptians. It is the colored birth stone for August and is ideal for summer wardrobes as the color ranges from shades of yellowish green to olive and brownish green.

Peridot has been used in fashion and ritual for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians utilized Peridot stones in religious rituals and used it to adorn Cleopatra’s and other Pharaoh’s treasures. To them it was the gemstone of the sun and was thought to reveal insights and embellish dreams as well as protect against the evil eye.

Ancient Romans called it the “emerald of the evening” as it does not change color even in artificial light. Ottoman Sultans had a large array of Peridot in their vaults and it adorns many treasures in European cathedrals, medieval churches and prized possessions. As a testament of his undying love, Napoleon gave a Peridot ring to Josephine. Legend also has it that pirates favored Peridot as a form of protection and setting it in gold would defend the wearer from terrors in the night.

Peridot’s popularity faded for a while until the 1990s when a rich deposit of the finest Peridots the world had seen was found in Pakistan, rekindling the world’s interest in the gemstone. Since their discovery, gemstone cutters have become increasingly creative in cutting Peridots (a fragile stone which can be quite complicated to work with) with elaborate facets and designs.

Pearls, teardrops from the sky...

June’s Birthstones are Pearls and Alexandrites… Here is some folklore about Pearls

Organic gems, pearls are formed inside mollusks such as oysters and mussels when an irritant (such as some sand) gets into the mollusk’s shell. In defense, the mollusk coats the object with layers of nacre forming the pearl. The iridescent luster occurs from light reflecting on the overlapping layers in a process that can take up to seven or eight years. Pearls vary in color from white to pink, brown or black and the coloration depends on the type of mollusk and its habitat.

Treasured as a gem with the power of love, success, protection and luck, many cultures cherish pearls. Early Chinese myths claim that pearls come from the sky when dragons fought. Greeks believed they were tears from the gods and wearing them would promote marital bliss. According to Italian legend, the seven islands that make up the Tuscan archipelago were created when Venus broke her pearl necklace in the Tyrrhenian sea.

Hebrew legend claims that pearls were the tears of Eve upon being banished from Eden and Islamic tradition considers pearls to be one of the great rewards found in Paradise and a symbol of perfection. In an Indian myth, pearls are dewdrops from heaven, caught by shellfish at sunrise during a phase of the full moon. With the intent of unsuspectingly implementing a love potion, in the past pearls were powdered or dissolved in red wine to be administered to victims as love charms.

Pearls are sensitive to extreme heat, acids, dryness and humidity and should be stored in cold, dark places and handled with care. For more information on pearls and how to handle them, please feel free to call or email us.

Commissioned to Redesign Crowns

Marry Me Jewelry was given the honor of being commissioned to make two crowns for Our Lady of Mt Carmel Church Blessed Mother and Child statues. The Shrine received a papal coronation from the Vatican in Rome in May 2009, an honor bestowed only to three sites in the United States in the last century. The dedication ceremony in the United States took place in June 2009.

The original crowns were crafted in early 1900 Italy with 18 Karat Gold.

The redesigned crown, completed through the leadership and imagination of Gino, has hand engraved patterns adorning the upper portion of the crown, with semi precious colored stone and pearls enhancing the design.

Gino described the experience as being “an extreme job but very fulfilling. The crowns for Our Lady of Mt. Carmel have been a pleasure to work on. Although creating a design to enhance the original crowns was challenging, as you can see the outcome is outstanding.” He further thanks the church for the opportunity to use his expertise and creativity for the re-creation of the crowns.

For more information, email info@marrymejewelry.com with Crowns in the subject line. Thanks!