There’s something so exciting about these incredibly large and perfect stones.

Sometimes they have well-documented histories and we know where they came from and who owned them and when.

But others have a past that’s not as well-known, and that only adds to the romance and mystique surrounding them.

Portuguese Diamond

One such diamond is called the Portuguese Diamond and is a 127-carat, cushion-cut diamond, shaped in an octagonal emerald shape. It’s nearly flawless.

While it’s called the Portuguese Diamond, with a story that it was mined in Brazil and became part of the Portuguese Crown Jewels, there’s really no true documentation that says definitively that that’s where the diamond was mined.

Must of the diamond’s history is pure legend and conjecture. One can only imagine who wore this incredible stone!

One part of the diamond’s history that is well-documented is that in February 1928 Peggy Hopkins Joyce traded a $350,000 pearl necklace for the diamond and $23,000 in cash.

According to New York newspaper accounts, it was mounted on a diamond-studded platinum choker to be worn close around the throat (probably the same necklace described above).

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.

We’ve become even more fascinated with beautiful jewelry because of the popularity of celebrity venues like award shows. Often this jewelry is on loan to the celebrity. At one time, we could only look at pieces like that a sigh wistfully.

Diamonds are the hardest known naturally occurring material.

Its hardness has been known since ancient times, and is the source of its name.

However, there have been synthetic diamonds created, which are even harder.

The hardest natural diamonds in the world are diamonds from the New England area in New South Wales, Australia. These diamonds are generally small, and are used to polish other diamonds.

Diamonds use in industry

Industrial use of diamonds has historically been associated with their hardness; this property makes diamond the ideal material for cutting and grinding tools.

It is one of the most known and most useful of more than 3,000 known minerals. As the hardest known naturally occurring material, diamond can be used to polish, cut, or wear away any material, including other diamonds.

Common industrial adaptations of this ability include diamond-tipped drill bits and saws, or use of diamond powder as an abrasive. Other specialized applications also exist or are being developed, including use as semiconductors: some blue diamonds are natural semiconductors, in contrast to most other diamonds, which are excellent electrical insulators.

How diamonds are made?

Diamonds form between 75-120 miles below the earth’s surface.

According to geologists the first delivery of diamonds was somewhere around 2.5 billion years ago and the most recent was 45 million years ago.

The carbon that makes diamonds comes from the melting of pre-existing rocks in the Earth’s upper mantle. There is an abundance of carbon atoms in the mantle.

Temperature changes in the upper mantle forces the carbon atoms to go deeper where it melts and finally becomes new rock, when the temperature reduces. If other conditions like pressure and chemistry is right then the carbon atoms in the melting crystal rock bond to build diamond crystals.

There is no guarantee that these carbon atoms will turn into diamonds. If the temperature rises or the pressure drops then the diamond crystals may melt partially or totally dissolve.

Even if they do form, it takes thousand of years for those diamonds to come anywhere near the surface.

It takes millions of years to make a diamond. When you own a diamond, you own something which is a legend in the making. It has not been made in a factory just the other day. A diamond comes from the bosom of the earth. More interestingly not all the diamonds mined are made into jewelry.

There’s something incredibly mysterious about the largest emeralds.

It’s one of the rarest of gemstones, unattainable for most of us, at least in a good-quality stone.

Hooker Emerald

Hooker emerald is a magnificent 75.57-carat emerald that was supposedly owned by the Ottoman Empire until 1900. Legend has it was used in the belt buckle of a sultan!

The stone was featured in Tiffany’s 1950 Christmas Catalog. Mrs. Janet Annenberg Hooker bought the stone in 1955 from Tiffany’s and donated it to the museum in 1977.

Emeralds are part of the beryl family of jewels. Green beryls are called emeralds, while blue-green beryls are called aquamarines. A pink shade of beryl is called Morganite. There’s even a red beryl that’s rarer than emeralds themselves.

The name emerald comes from the Greek smaragdos via the Old French esmeralde, and really just means ‘green gemstone’. Innumerable fantastic stories have grown up around this magnificent gem.

The Incas and Aztecs of South America, where the best emeralds are still found today, regarded the emerald as a holy gemstone. However, probably the oldest known finds were once made near the Red Sea in Egypt.

Garnets have been known and used in jewelry for thousands of years.

Legend says that Noah used a garnet lantern to safely steer his Ark through the darkness of the night and the great flood.

Garnets are found in jewelry from ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman eras.

Many courageous discoverers and travelers wore garnets for protection, as they were considered popular talismans and protective stones, because it was believed in those days that garnets illuminate the night and prevent their wearer from any sort of evil.

Today science explained to us that the proverbial luminosity of garnet is caused by its high refraction of light.

Although the color red is the one, which occurs most frequently, there are also garnets showing different shades of green, pale to bright yellow, fiery orange and fine earth- and umbra-shades. Only blue is a color, which is not available in garnet.

What are Garnets?

Garnets are gemstones, which are in high demand and are often worked into pieces of jewelry – especially since today not only the traditional gemstone colors red, blue and green are cherished by the consumer, but the intermediate shades and hues are also very popular. Garnets are unusual because their tone can change depending on whether they’re seen in natural or artificial light.

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.

It is referred to as a Spiritual Stone because its color violet is same as that of the crown chakra. Amethysts also are believed to calm emotions and reduce stress. It’s an amulet for travelers, and helps whoever holds the stone to have a more optimistic outlook and perspective. Placing it under your pillow is supposed to help induce sleep and prophetic dreams.

As much as we love diamonds, we’re also in love with colored stones and gems like aquamarines and morganite, which can range from peach to lavender in color, are becoming more and more prevalent in gemstone jewelry.

Beryl colors

Beryl is the mineral from which emeralds are created. But beryl comes in a variety of colors, making it a versatile gem.

Morganite is probably the most popular of the other beryls. It has a pastel pink to peach or lavender which is similar in intensity to the blue of aquamarine.

Morganite has been marketed as “Pink Emerald” and “Pink Aquamarine” to emphasize the kinship to its popular cousins. It was first discovered in California.

It was also discovered in 1908 in Madagascar. There are also deposits in Brazil, Mozambique, Namibia, Afghanistan, and Russia. However, morganite is relatively rare, which stands in the way of it becoming a jewelry stone.

Heliodor, or golden beryl, is named after the Greek words for sun – helios – and gift – doron. The sunny yellow color of this beryl lives up to its name. Heliodor was discovered in Namibia in 1910 in a pegmatite that also produced aquamarine, which is also colored by iron.

Beryl

The beryl is the family of crystal that creates emeralds and aquamarines, when its color is green or blue-green, respectively.

Red beryl is bixbite or red emerald or scarlet emerald, pink beryl is morganite, white beryl is goshenite, and a clear bright yellow beryl is called golden beryl.

Other shades, such as yellow-green for heliodor and honey yellow are common. It can also come in violet.

Sources of emeralds:

The earliest known source of emerald was near the Red Sea in Egypt, the so-called Cleopatra’s emerald mines. They were probably worked from about 2000 B.C., apparently the location of them was lost in the middle ages, and not rediscovered until 1818. Most emeralds used in ancient jewelry are believed to have come from these mines. They are not worked nowadays because of the low quality of crystals found.

Emeralds have been found in Austria since Roman times; these are no longer commercially mined.

Columbia is generally recognized as the source of the world’s finest quality emeralds, both in the past and the present. The Columbian Indians were using them before 1537, when Quesada conquered Columbia.

Citrine

Citrine is any quartz crystal or cluster that is yellow or orange in color.

Although, often cut as a gemstone, citrine is actually somewhat rare in nature.

Citrine is one of the most affordable gemstones, thanks to the durability and availability of this golden quartz.

Named from the French name for lemon,”citron,” many citrines have a juicy lemon color, but like all gemstones, there is a range of colors that can be exhibited as citrine.

Citrine colors

Citrine colors include yellow, gold to orange brown shades of transparent quartz. It’s a cheery-looking stone, and affordable and is popular as a gemstone for jewelry. In ancient times, citrine was carried as a protection against snake venom and evil thoughts.

Although the darker, orange colors of citrine, sometimes called Madeira citrine after the color of the wine, has generally been the most valued color, in modern times, many people prefer the bright lemony shades, which mix better with pastel colors. Citrine is generally more inexpensive than amethyst and is also available in a wide range of calibrated sizes and shapes, including very large sizes.