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When I cut this moderately heavily included round I had no idea that it contained copper as a chromophore. I learned that later when I tested it with my spectrometer. It is a mildly attractive rather grayed green/blue under mixed light. Its crystal is not good and there are a wide variety of inclusion, none of them are a major distraction. It doesn’t have the “neon” look that is associated with cuprian bearing tourmaline. But I like it because it is different. It weighs 4.95 carats.
Bruce
About Bruce Fry
I was born in Summit, NJ in 1947 and graduated from Summit High School in 1966. I graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in 1970 and after spending another year in graduate school, I left to see the world of Brazil. After spending some more time discovering myself, I ended up working for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 32 years as an Air Quality Engineer in the Department of Environmental Protection. I retired in 2007 and took up faceting gemstones again after a long hiatus that reached back to my twenties. I had started cutting cabochons when I was 13 and bought my first faceting machine when I was 15, but ran out of money and time until I retired.
My great love in gemology is tourmaline and the collection presented here represents my effort to get as much beauty and variety in the colors of tourmaline as I can. I was particularly lucky in being able to get unheated cuprian tourmaline before copper was discovered in gem grade tourmaline from Mozambique.
