This deeply cut round does not look like a tourmaline. I has a pastel purple crown and a pastel green pavilion. The stone is eye clean and with fine crystal. It weighs 2.01 carats and flashes both colors.
First of all, cutting a round out of a bicolor is not the “normal” way of bring the best out it. But the rough was unbalanced and so stubby that to cut an emerald cut would not show the colors off very well. Next purple and green tourmaline bicolors are not very common in the world I deal in, but neither color was an exception by itself.
Therefor we will go where no cutter from Mars has gone before. I put the medium toned green in the pavilion and the medium toned purple in the crown and hoped for the best. I cut a deep pavilion with horizontally split mains and the modified two step crown, that makes the deepest round that is reasonable to me.
As I turn the stone, trying to compose a description of a gemstone that does NOT look like a tourmaline, I will start by saying that the deep round appears to be eye clean and has a good amount of flash. It has a medium tone level that just soaked up enough color, to put on a fine display of pastel purple and green, on a morning of a gray day. The green flash predominates around the girdle, but it still manages to penetrate the area under the table. Under the table it is mixed with the purple and individual facets can reflect either green or purple depending on the angle of the stone to the eye when it flashes. The only stone I have ever seen that reminds of this tourmaline was a synthetic color changer I saw at a show. The color changer when from green to purple and under the mixed light of the display, both colors were presented.
It is tourmaline with a color difference like this gemstone that helps keep my interest up, in a market that is producing very little material of interest. (2013) It weighs 2.01 carats and needs an appreciative eye because it is not eye candy.
Bruce
