This oval with two distinct shades of green weighs 3.66 carats and is eye clean. The greens are well balanced in tone. #956
Now I love the dynamic nature of hues (color) in many tourmaline, but it can make an effort to honestly present, in both photography and writing, its beauty. Now this eye clean oval possesses two distinct colors that had me up and walking around to try and analyst it. As I have written before, tourmaline has to be seen upfront and personal, under a variety of conditions, to be truly appreciated.
Now for my attempt to “see” the color in this tourmaline for you. The gemstone is not oriented with the long axis parallel to the c axis and therefor the bright yellow green of new grass in the spring always appears somewhere on the stones as it is rotated. The c axis color which has a moderately higher tone level, seems to fill in the area left behind by the moving grass green and is much harder to describe. Its level of saturation (purity) in green is higher than the a/b, but it has a distinctly bluish cast. I keep thinking of Kentucky bluegrass so I will go with that.
I suspect that this gem was cut from an alluvial pebble because of the lack of axis orientation. I really like frosted pebbles with all the axises open and colorful, they can be great fun, while long narrow crystal limit my cutting options. Now don’t get me wrong, I love rich/dark green emerald cuts in the collection, but I think that some people have the impression that tourmaline is limited to that and this collection was created to break the misconception, not reinforce it.
Bruce
