EMERALD              

Imagine yourself wandering into an art gallery. Every painting is a unique shade of green and a multitude of shapes seem to lie within the color. Each work is different,no two designs alike, all beautiful and intriguing. It’s fascinating. You look deeper and deeper and you are engrossed. How could you not be? You have been drawn into another world. Welcome to the Art Gallery of the Eternal Emerald. Emeralds have been the preferred gem of royalty for thousands of years; Cleopatra was enchanted by their magnificent green nuances, the ancient Greeks and Romans were not alone in believing them to possess magical powers and the Mughal emperors carved prayers and poems onto them. The shortsighted Nero sharpened his vision with an emerald eyeglass, the better to see his gladiators fight and it is even speculated that he might have worn this eyepiece while watching Rome burn. Emeralds are very rare, much rarer than diamonds. They are mined in many localities known for their rich gem bearing grounds such as Brazil, Colombia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Zambia, Russia,Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Mozambique, Canada and India, but the chemical elements that form them and are responsible for their color – chromium and vanadium – are seldom found together in nature. Some localities like Colombia produce a particular variety of crystal, the trapiche, in which black inclusions form a star shape in the middle of the hexagonal crystal.

Emerald is a green variety of beryl but not just any green. It comes in the most beautiful shades of green the eye can perceive: yellow-green, intense green, blue-green, dark green, light green. All these greens seem to glow with an inner light and, interestingly, their intensity does not change or lose liveliness in artificial light. Emerald crystallizes in hexagonal crystals. These can be so big that the ancient populations of Central America carved figures out of them, which the Conquistadores carried back with them to Europe. As recently as 1912 a watch was discovered mounted in an emerald crystal. It had been made in the 17th century and buried for centuries amongst the treasures of the Cheap side Hoard in London. Elizabeth Taylor, a passionate collector of fine jewelry and gems, adored emeralds. Several jewelry houses have larger emeralds mounted in their pieces; some of these beautiful stones are carved with religious verses and floral motifs, and were originally made for the Mughals of India and the Persian kings. Emeralds are brittle and have poor toughness, so they must be treated with care. They are generally cut into rounded shapes or their trademark emerald cut – a square or rectangle with cut off corners. Cutters rise to this challenge with their lapidary skills, proud to see the magical green color take on the form of a beautifully cut emerald.
(Chapter from the Book “Gemstones. Terra Connoisseur” by Vladyslav Yavorskyy)