Smart Gems

There are millions of minerals that exist on the earth, but few of them are prized as gems and used for adornment. Many of them aren’t in colors that are usually highly prized for jewelry. Or they’re not able to be cut and polished to be made wearable as jewelry.

Often it’s a matter of changing taste and times. In Imperial Russia and in the Victorian era, the mineral malachite and other opaque minerals were highly valued as gemstones jewelry. It is often a by-product of copper mining, and is distinguished by a brilliant green color, with dark concentric circles of color swirling through it. It’s not as highly valued because it’s easily available and not as expensive as an emerald or ruby. But there is an entire room devoted to malachite in the Russian museum, the Hermitage, as testament to its desirability among the most privileged class of people.

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What specifically are gems and gemstones? We know some of the most common ones – emeralds, rubies, sapphires and diamonds. But what exactly are they, how are they made and why we do we prize them so highly?

The International Gem Society defines a gem as “a mineral that has been chosen for its beauty and durability, then cut and polished for human adornment.”

Most gems are minerals. Others, like pearls or amber, are created from living organisms. Usually gems are of a color that mirrors other natural elements we consider beautiful or valuable. Emeralds mirror the lush green of plant life, sapphires are the color of the sky and rubies are a rich blood-red. There are variations in color in all of these gems, of course, and in diamonds, but those are the colors most normally associated with them. Diamonds can come in colors as well, with pink and canary diamonds being highly prized variants.

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Gems come in every color of the spectrum. While sapphires, rubies and emeralds are what come to mind first when one thinks of a colored gem, there are so many other beautiful colored gemstones to consider. Even among gems normally associated with one color, there are gradations and variations to them. A sapphire, for example, comes in many different hues of blue, depending on where it’s from. But sapphires can also come in pink, yellow and green.

The most highly prized colored gems are in the very deepest, richest hues of the color. While sapphires can range from pale blue to near-black, the most valuable are a rich, deep blue. The same holds true for rubies. While they too can range in color from pale to very dark and murky, the most highly-valued color is what’s called pigeon’s blood, a deep blood-red ruby that is mined in what was once known as Burma.

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The appeal of diamonds and other precious gems has endured for eons. They confer on the wearer a feeling of beauty, value, status. We are drawn to them and we all have our personal favorites. Sometimes it’s our birthstone. For others, a particular stone reflects a favorite color. There is almost a magical feeling when you are near them, the energy they create it is palpable.

While the clear diamond has been the traditional stone of choice for engagement and wedding bands, other stones are actually more valued and prized because of their rarity. The sapphire has often been the stone of choice for royal betrothal rings. When Princess Diana selected her 18-carat sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring, she selected one of the rarest stones on the earth.  When Jennifer Lopez was engaged to Ben Affleck, she sported a 6-carat pink diamond ring. Camilla Parker-Bowles chose an emerald ring when she became engaged to Prince Charles.

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Amethyst is a violet or purple variety of quartz often used as an ornament or jewelry. The name comes from the Greek A (not) and methuskein (”to intoxicate”), a reference to the belief that the stone protected its owner from drunkenness; the ancient Greeks and Romans wore amethyst and made drinking vessels of it in the belief that it would prevent intoxication.

Amethyst was used as a gemstone by the ancient Egyptians and was largely employed in antiquity for intaglios. Beads of amethyst are found in Anglo-Saxon graves in England.
Amethyst has been in use for thousands of years in magic, healing and psychic empowerment. Its violet color makes this one of the most sought after variety of quartz. It has a large number of qualities and uses that have been given it over the years and it is said to be a stone that radiates energy which has often been referred to as the purple ray.

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It’s hard to imagine that a mineral with a name as mundane as corundum yields gems as exquisite as the ruby and sapphire, or even that these two stones, so different in color and mystique, are actually the same mineral family.

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As a species, we love to adorn ourselves with jewelry, makeup, hair accessories. We do it now to enhance our looks, to attract a mate and because it just makes us feel good about ourselves. Some forms of adornment are symbolic – like wedding rings. Or they’re used to make a statement about our lifestyle, like multiple piercings and earrings.

Have you ever wondered what the origins are of such self-decoration? Was there a meaning behind it? Or did we just start wearing beads, necklaces and earrings as our awareness of self increased and as we evolved?

We know that the earliest jewelry of bits of bones, shells and other personal adornments appeared in graves about 40,000 years ago. The idea that there was an afterlife, and the belief in spirits both good and bad, gave rise to the means to attract the good spirits and ward off the bad ones.

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The earliest forms of jewelry were items that early humans found naturally, such as shells or bits of bones. Early gravesites have also revealed that pre-historic man buried his dead with flowers and with carved ivory beads. These primitive beads would have taken at least an hour each to make.

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