All you need to know about one of the gems most loved by jewelry: the aquamarine, which is also the stone of the month of March ♦
The aquamarine is one of the stones most used in jewelry. Major brands of jewelry have included it in their collections. Yet it is little known by the general public that ignores the quality and, above all, the features.
Identikit. Transparent and crystalline: not by chance is called aquamarine that glitter even under lowlight conditions. A quality that makes it a “star” of fine jewelry. Like emerald, is a stone that belongs to the beryl family. The structure, however, is very different from the green gem: the iron impurities inside give that deep azure blue color, while chromium and vanadium tinged with green emerald. Almost always, the aquamarine is without inclusions: whether appear the star effect or the one called cat eyes it becomes invaluable. Its hardness allows jewelers to experiment with innovative cuts and, in fact, has been used for the Color du Temps necklace from the Peau d’âne collection by Van Cleef & Arpels, for the jewelry designed by Tiffany in the movie The Great Gatsby, for the Bulgari Serpente bought by Justin Bieber during the charity auction at Cannes Film Festival.
Color. the range of colors of aquamarine is very narrow: blue, slightly greenish blue, greenish blue, blue-green, blue. The rarest shades are dark blue and slightly greenish blue. In general, the more intense is blue, greater is the stone value: that’s why the most common ones tend to light green.
Treatment. Aquamarine is a mineral that is almost always the subject of a treatment to make it more pleasant. Much of the aquamarine in its natural state, in fact, has a blue-green color. For this reason the stone is heated to a rather high temperature. This process can remove the greenish color from the material and transform the hue of the stone into a pleasant deep blue. So if they tell you that an aquamarine is absolutely natural you do not have to believe it. But this does not mean that the result can’t be appreciated.
Provenance. The best known reserves of aquamarine are those in Minas Gerais, whose buds have a distinctive deep blue color. Always in Brazil there is the Santa Maria de Itabira mine with deep blue, stones which are a favorite choice of gemologists. Other deposits are exploited on an industrial scale in the Urals, Nigeria, Madagascar, Mozambique and Pakistan. As a rule, the color is saturated if weigh more than 5 carats, while the smaller stones are lighter, with the exception of some specimens from Madagascar, known for a very strong hues even if under 5 carats. That’s why it costs more compared to other stones of the same color, but as higher dimensions.
