Gem stories: Tanzanite

Fine Tanzanite eye clean heart, weighing 7.28 cts from Tanzania

Tanzanite is the trade name given by the gemmologists at Tiffany & Co to the transparent violet-blue variety of Zoisite, the mineral which was described by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1805. Tanzanite is generally enhanced by heat unless otherwise specified. The unheated crystals can be green, violet, yellowish or, light blue but a brownish root beer color is most common. Heating at 380 degrees C will produce the intense top blue sapphire color. Surprisingly, it is the dark brown crystals that produce the most valuable dark blue stones after heating. The treatment is permanent and accepted in the trade.

Gem stories: Taaffeite

Very rare eye clean Taaffeite weighing 2.32cts from Sri Lanka.

Taaffeite is one of the rarest and most desirable of collector's gemstones. Only a very few stones have been found and most of them originally misidentified as spinel. Multicolour.com, discovered some taafeites in it's mine run material from Tunduru, Tanzania.

Cultrured pearls and jewellery note

Orchira Pearl Brooch

Like natural pearls, cultured pearls grow inside of a mollusk, but with human intervention and always sold by their size in millimeters. Pearls come in eight basic shapes: round, semi-round, button, drop, pear, oval, baroque, and circled.   Pearls with the smoothest surfaces are the highest-quality, most sought-after pearls.

Regarding buying pearl jewellery, you need to know the following: almost all pearls used for jewelry are cultured by planting a core or nucleus into pearl oysters.  Abalone from along the Pacific Coast, primarily California, produce both blister and free pearls and their shells are used for inlay in jewelry and other items.

Pearl jewellery is a great gift and safe bet for most people, since it will never look out of fashion and ideal for gifts and for that special and romantic occasions.

Jewellery Marketplace Design

It seems that  Pearlera silently unveiled the first phase of a significant redesign and rebranding of their website. Re-built from the ground up, presentation of jewellery inventory improved drastically:  reviews, social media and many other features are added. In addition to tha  pearl jewelery range, a lot of designer gemstone jewellery and fine jewellery collections now available. Among other distinct features on the website is a jewellery mixer and zoom which allows to inspect every detail on a jewellery piece at various angles.

Pearlera.com soft launch

Scottish Beauty is the new face of Orchira’s summer pearl jewellery range

Emma Blythe, best known as the “Scottish Beauty“, is the new face of Orchira’s summer pearl jewellery range.

Treasure Book with the secret cash voucher

David Wein, known for it's natural alexandrite jewellery collection, have released the new version of their Treasure Book catalogue, which shipped with every online order.  New to this catalogue is the secret cash voucher code hidden inside. Surprise, surprise - for a $250.00 voucher that can be redeemed at their website only.

"Tatiana" - Brazilian alexandrite engagement ring

Fit for a princess and perfect for an engagement, this  stunning white gold eternity ring comes with strong colour change natural Brazilian alexandrite's. Most  of alexandrite jewellery currently  available on the market are synthetic, marketed as "created alexandrite", and it's not easy to find genuine alexandrite ring.  Alexandrite's are not typical stones you will find in the jewellery, but they surely  make a beautiful match with classic engagement and eternity settings.

Orchira Spring pearl jewellery collection

One of our favorite  fashion jewellery brand has launched its 2011 spring pearl jewellery collection with a wider range of  ideas to cater for gift  Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day shoppers. Orchira is planning to impress customers with  unique mixture of freshwater pearls and semi-precious coloured gems. The  25%-off discount code is JETAIME and redeemable only at Orchira website.

Precision-cut genuine calibrated gemstones

Since Switzerland-based Signity stopped  producing natural precision-cut gemstones, we were looking for the new source. and finally found one in Bangkok, Thailand. Signity was a joint venture between Swarovski and Golay Buchel, and actually was doing decent job with precision cutting, thanks to the Swarovski machines, although selection of natural stones was not that great.

Machine-cut precision calibrated gemstones facetted and graded to the most strict criteria of colour, clarity, size and shape, producing necessary  uniformity and consistency which can be used for manufacturing intricate piece of jewellery (with a lot of pave or invisible settings) or mass production of jewellery using  semi automatic equipment like CNC  machines.

Full Collar Swan Plumage Pearl Choker

Hand strung pure white biwa pearl choker  complimented with a silver ball clas,, Over a hundred of graduated 35mm long biwa pearl needles in this nekclace The purity of the white colour is bridal wear at its best, and the irregular needle like shapes secure a unique personality of this piece.