Featured Gem TOPAZ
Honey yellow. Fiery orange. Cyclamen pink. Icy blue. In warm or cool tones, topaz is a lustrous and brilliant gem.
Colorless topaz treated to blue is a mass-market gem. Fine pink-to-red, purple, or orange gems are one-of-a-kind pieces. Top sources include Villa Rica, Brazil, and Russia's Ural Mountains.
BIRTHSTONE: NOVEMBER
overview
Topaz actually has an exceptionally wide color range that, besides brown, includes various tones and saturations of blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, and purple. Colorless topaz is plentiful, and is often treated to give it a blue color. Topaz is also pleochroic, meaning that the gem can show different colors in different crystal directions.
10 mev
Irradiating colorless topaz with electrons at energy of 10 million electron volts creates a sky blue color.
1768
The royal court in Portugal celebrates the discovery of Imperial topaz in 1768.
271 kilos
A transparent topaz crystal discovered in Minas Gerais, Brazil weighs an astounding 596 pounds.
QUALITY FACTORS
color
The most valued topaz colors are orangy red to red. Blue gems are widely available.
clarity
Topaz used in jewelry is typically eye clean with no visible inclusions.
cut
Topaz crystals are usually columnar, and cut as oval or pear shapes to improve yield.
carat weight
Topaz can often form as large crystals. These can yield sizeable cut gems.