By colour
Browse by colour
Colour is usually the first decision — most people know they want a blue stone well before they know which species will give it to them. These are the twelve families the collection is filed under, and what each one honestly covers.
- Blue3 in stockThe colour Sri Lanka is known for, and the one with the most names attached to it — several of which are a particular laboratory's call rather than a description, and are treated here as such. Ceylon blue runs lighter and more violet than the basaltic blues of Australia and Thailand, which is a geological difference, not a grading one.
- Pink2 in stockPink is not a hue. It is low tone and low-to-medium saturation across the red and purple hues, which is why the boundary with ruby is a judgement rather than a measurement — there is no international definition of it and no chemical test. Sri Lanka has historically called pink corundum ruby where buying countries call it pink sapphire, so what a stone is called can depend on which end of the trade you are standing at.
- Violet & purple1 in stockGenuinely purple corundum, and the mauve and lavender spinels, are a Sri Lankan speciality that the market has never priced as highly as the blues. Taaffeite, which is routinely mistaken for spinel and needs a laboratory to tell the two apart, lives here too.
- Yellow3 in stockPushparaga in Sinhala, running from pale yellow to a deep saffron. Yellow sapphire is one of the few corundum colours Sri Lanka produces in quantity without heat, which matters more here than it does in most colours.
- Orange2 in stockThe narrow band where the padparadscha argument happens. Whether a given stone qualifies depends on which laboratory is asked, and this shop states which one said so rather than making the call itself.
- Red2 in stockRuby, red spinel, and the almandine and pyrope garnets. For two centuries the finest 'rubies' in several crown jewels turned out to be spinel, which is worth remembering when a red stone is priced as one thing and is another.
- Green3 in stockAlexandrite's daylight face, the green chrysoberyls, and the kornerupine and enstatite that turn up in Ceylon gravels and almost nowhere else in the trade.
- Brownnone right nowThe colour nobody markets, which is exactly why there is a family for it. Hessonite's cinnamon, the honey and brown zircons, sinhalite. Filing a brown stone under orange would flatter it, and this shop would rather name it.
- White & grey1 in stockGrey spinel, grey-blue corundum at the achromatic end, and the white body colour of moonstone before the sheen is counted.
- Blacknone right nowBlack spinel and black star corundum — where the body colour is not actually black at all, and the listing says so.
- Colourlessnone right nowColourless sapphire and zircon. Historically sold under diamond's name, which is a thing this shop will not do.
- Parti-colournone right nowTwo or more colours visible in one stone, face up. Thin ground in Ceylon material, and the honest word for most of it is zoned rather than parti-coloured.
A stone that changes colour is filed under both of its faces, so an alexandrite appears under green and under red. A colour with nothing in it today is not a colour we do not deal in — or see everything in stock.