Bright, flawless, medium large bi-color of reddish brown and pale cream. Unusual color separation indicates old terminus.
I love this gemstone. It has a lot going for it. It is well over 5 carats and flawless. The balance of the two colors in the emerald cut is good and the demarcation between the colors is crisp. I will concede that the colors are a bit different, but that is the name of the game with many tourmaline I quest for. And its secret is both visible and interesting, which gives me something to carry on about with tourmaline. The final plus for me is that I got a good price on this bi-color because the colors are not too “commercial” and it is unique in the collection.
Now what is the secret of this bi-color? Because the almost colorless part of the bi-color is so clean and the way the bi-color is cut, you can see that the reddish part of the gemstone was the old terminus of the crystal. At least a few of the old terminus facets clearly slope up toward the table of the emerald cut. The crystal’s continuation of growth after some change in its growing conditions at the terminus is not exceptional, (all bi and tri color tourmalines would have to have done it), but the sharpness, clarity and visibility of the transition is what makes this gemstone exceptional.
I would like to take a lot of credit for this well engineered gemstone, but outside of choosing the rough off the inter net and working to get a good color balance, I did not know what I had until I finished the gemstone. As with many tourmalines, if you really want to see how their colors and their tone levels really are distributed in the finished gemstone, you have to turn the the gemstone over to find its secrets.
Bruce
