“Ethical mining” is a growing movement in the industry. It involves mining practices that are fair to workers (providing safe conditions and fair wages) and environmentally responsible (reclaiming land, planting trees, and protecting water sources). When buying, it is always best to ask if your jeweler can trace the stone back to a certified or ethically operated source.
Gem cutters (lapidaries) use different techniques depending on the stone’s optical properties and clarity:
In the professional world of gem grading, “eye-clean” is a term used to describe a colored gemstone that has no visible inclusions (flaws) when viewed by the naked eye from a distance of about 6 to 12 inches. If you need a magnifying glass to see the internal marks, it is considered very high-quality.
Inclusions are like a gemstone’s “fingerprints.” They are tiny bits of other minerals or liquids trapped inside the stone while it was growing underground millions of years ago. Common inclusions include:
Though they sound exactly the same, they measure completely different things in the jewelry world:TermWhat it MeasuresCarat (ct)The physical weight of a gemstone. (1 carat = 0.2 grams).Karat (k)The purity of gold. 24K is pure gold, while 18K means it is 75% gold and 25% other metal alloys.
Opals are unique because they don’t have a single solid color. When light hits the internal structure of an opal—which consists of tiny silica spheres—the light bends and splits, creating flashes of every color of the rainbow that seem to jump and dance as you rotate the stone. This phenomenon is strictly called “Play-of-Color.”
While high-quality Alexandrite and Padparadscha Sapphires from Sri Lanka are incredibly rare, the Red Diamond holds the title for the most expensive gemstone per carat globally. They are so exceptionally rare that only a handful of pure red diamonds are known to exist in the entire world, often selling for over 1 million USD per…