Strongly dichroic emerald cut with richer ends that float between purplish and orangish pink. Slightly brown in a/b axis color makes the stone look wooden. This 7.40 carat is eye clean and has fine crystal.
I have seen this combination of a richly colored c axis with some shade of pink and a pale a/b axis with an off color pink. Looking hard I think that the a/b pink has got a little brown in it. Now it would be nice to orient every tourmaline to get the best color, but it was not reasonable with this piece of rough. Too much material would have been ground away and besides, it would not make as different a pink as letting the table be parallel to the c axis.
So I cut a large flawless piece of rough with fine crystal into a strongly dichroic emerald cut. If I would have cut the rough in half and put the table perpendicular to the c axis, the a/b color would have been practically unimportant to the gemstone. But with the chosen orientation, the c axis color dwells in the ends and filters down the axis to somewhat darken the middle of the emerald cut. The a/b color makes the middle of the emerald cut look rather wooden to me because of its brownish touch. Finally the darker ends of the emerald cut really work with the middle to make a gemstone that looks rather like a slightly purplish medium dark piece of faceted wood. The flash in the ends is somewhat restrained as I have found with pinks that have a touch of purple, but the emerald cut is quite bright. The large emerald cut weighs in at 7.40 carats.
Last minute update. I checked the storage box, just to be sure that I agreed on the color calls with this difficult stone. I had pink orange rather than pink purple. So I quickly went away from my light source and got the decreasing natural light and sure enough I saw more orange than purple. Quandary and then the sky completely clouded over and I saw more purple again. Therefor I am going to let the post stand as it is. I think I will have to take this tourmaline out behind the woodpile and make sure that it never makes me work so hard again.
Bruce
