This flash driven bicolor of pink and brown is unique in the collection. It is eye clean and has fine crystal. Its dark tone rather hides its bicolor nature. It weighs 6.21 carats.
Before I was able to buy cuprian material from Mozambique, my opportunities to buy purple tourmaline had been severally limited. My hope to buy blue purple had been fruitless. I wished that I had been active when Paraiba was affordable and everything had not been heated to greens and blues. But the quest must go on and when I received this darker gemstone of a rather peculiar mixture of pink and brown, I somehow saw a bit of purple in the emerald cut, face up. I named it birich and hoped that this outrider would signal the beginning of something in purple tourmaline. Well it really wasn’t even a false start and I have never gotten another tourmaline that is similar.
Now looking closely at this unusual tourmaline, I find a complex personality. It does have a decent flash driven color for an emerald cut, but it does not announce its bicolor nature very easily. It just seems to play with the eye and maybe flash, even the hoped for purple (not really). From the back I can easily see its bicolor nature, eye clean body with a decent crystal. Birich weighs in at 6.21 carats. He will never win a beauty prize, but he keeps you guessing.
Bruce
