Sapphires for September

Sapphires are one of my favorite stones, and they are the birth stone for the month of September One of the most amazing things about sapphires is the range of colors they can be found in! Anything from colorless to blue to pink and even yellow and green!

Sapphires are ideal for jewelry because they are very hard and durable as a gemstone. Second only in hardness to diamonds, sapphires can be set in just about any type of setting without worry, however, it’s important to know, especially for cleaning purposes, if your sapphire has been exposed to any treatments, like heat.

It’s interesting to know, that clear sapphires are occasionally cut as microscopic lens, mainly because they are very hard and highly refractive. Gem-quality colorless sapphires are not common though. Rough colorless sapphires are usually light brown or grey when mined, and then heated to make them clear.

The most desirable blue sapphires are those with the cornflower blue color, which is commonly referred to as “Kashmir blue”. The word sapphire comes from the Latin word, sapphirus, meaning blue.

Sapphires belong to the category of gemstones called Corundum. Corundum gemstones all contain the crystalized composition aluminum oxide. What color a sapphire becomes depends on what other minerals color the stone during the development process. Red stones are typically colored with chromium, blue stones, typically colored with iron and titanium, and yellow sapphires get their color from iron.

The value of a sapphire depends on how rich the color of the natural stone is, along with it’s transparency. The most valuable stones have the best transparency and the richest natural color.

The most common treatments for sapphires is heat-treatments to enhance or change their color. Sometimes radiation is used to enhance a stone’s color, although this process is not very stable to light and another treatment called beryllium diffusion is also sometimes used.

In the United States, Montana is the largest producer of natural sapphires called “Montana” sapphires. These are typically small sapphires, and they come in a range of colors, but are primarily found in blue and yellow.

Chrissi