This outstanding, medium plus tone level, pink is called strawberry in Afghanistan. Its well saturated color is excellent, but its feathers/ crystal quality place it in the emerald group, for inclusions. It weighs 4.39 carats.
She and her family are known wide and far in Afghanistan and their given name is strawberry. When I heard of this exceptional, saturated pink from Afghanistan, that was found in large crystals that were always included and had to be sawed into pieces suitable for faceting, I had to try and get an example. Fortunately, my direct connection for material from Afghanistan, threw the internet, could let me have one piece. When it arrive, I carefully check the sawed block of practically medium dark, overwhelmingly pink, tourmaline for its hidden flaws. They weren’t really hidden, for most of them were residuals left on the surface of the rough, after having the flaws cut out with a diamond saw. As I turned the piece of rough, which had practically been preformed for an emerald cut or similar deep rectangular cut, I was seeing the surface flaws and wondering if I would be able to get a stone with decent cleanliness out of the rough. Then I turned it again and the vision of the final emerald cut jump out at me. It wasn’t pure, but it was good enough and the color, tone level and saturation was going to make it great. This orientation would also not give me the biggest sized emerald cut, but that was not that important in my collectors eyes.
The emerald cut that came out of the block of pink is spectacular. It has an ideal tone level of medium plus, for a saturated pink that is too powerful to be simply called hot. It has no major feathers, but I see wispy feathers, like the clouds that signal the coming of a cold front under, the table. They are mostly overwhelmed by the gemstones restrained flash and tone value. Yes this beautiful gemstone does have a poorer quality of flash than most tourmalines and this does restrain its ability to reflect light. I would compare to the look of a fine quality emerald, and it gives the gemstone a rather more substantial rather than eye candy quality. It weighs 4.39 carats.
Bruce
