Birthstones – Gemstones that tell about you: August, September

For August, we have peridot and sardonyx, and for September we have two blue stones, sapphire and lapis lazuli.

August: Peridot, Sardonyx

Peridot is the gem variety of olivine. Peridot is the birthstone for August and the Zodiac stone for the constellation Libra (astrological sources refer to peridot as Chrysolite). Peridot is associated with the values of fame, dignity, protection, and success.

Peridotes are olive green gemstones. Peridotes are associated with love, faithfulness, loyalty and truth.

 Peridotes are believed to help with dignity, protection, openness, growth and fame. This gem is said to help with illness in lungs, sinuses and lymph.

Gem quality peridot comes from the ancient source of Zagbargad (Zebirget) Island in the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt; Mogok, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma); Kohistan, Pakistan; Minas Gerais, Brazil; Eifel, Germany; Chihuahua, Mexico; Ethiopia; Australia; Peridot Mesa, San Carlos Apache Reservation, Gila County, Arizona and Salt Lake Crater, Oahu, Hawaii, USA. The best quality peridot has historically come either from Myanmar or Egypt.

Sardonyx is a banded variety of chalcedony (cryptocrystalline quartz), with layers alternating between Sard and Onyx. It is an impure fine-grained quartz whose crystals are too small to see. The color is usually a yellow-brown alternating with white, but other variants are also called sardonyx.

The banded nature of sardonyx is used to advantage by lapidaries and artisans, as a careful selection of material and design allows the creation of bas-relief art, where one layer is left as a foreground, and another is used as the background for a carving.

Sardonyx is the traditional birthstone for August. It is associated with relaxation and security.

September: Sapphire, Lapis Lazuli

Sapphires are well known from such places as Sri Lanka and India, and excellent specimens are also found in Tanzania and the Kola Pennensula of Russia. In addition, sapphires are found in many places throughout the world, including North Carolina, Brazil, and China.

Sapphires are extremely durable (only diamond and moisannite are harder).  Artificial sapphire crystals are used are used as the crystal face in genuine Rolex watches, and they are extremely scratch resistant.

Sapphires are gems that come in various colors, including, white, pink and blue. Sapphires will bring truth, constancy and sincerity. Sapphires are believed to help with insight, interpretation and clairvoyance and sapphires banish bad thoughts. The healing properties that sapphires have are cancer, burns, hearing problems and they are said to lower fever.

Lapis Lazuli

Lazurite is a popular but generally expensive mineral. Well-formed, deep blue crystals are rare and valuable. It is more commonly found massive and combined with other minerals into a rock called Lapis Lazuli, which is an alternate birthstone for the month of September.

Lapis lazuli (often simply called lapis) is mostly lazurite but commonly contains pyrite and calcite and some other minerals. The name means “blue rock” and is always a brilliant blue with violet or greenish tints. The rich blue color is due to the sulfur that is inherent in the structure of lazurite. Small crystals of pyrite are always present in lapis and their brassy yellow color is both attractive and diagnostic in distinguishing lapis from its also blue cousin - sodalite rock, which lacks pyrite. The calcite produces white streaks in the lapis and too much calcite will lower the value of the stone.

Lapis lazuli has been mined for centuries from a locality still in use today in the remote mountain valley called Kokcha, Afghanistan. First mined 6000 years ago, the rock was transported to Egypt and present day Iraq and later to Europe where it was used in jewelry and for ornamental stone. Europeans even ground down the rock into an expensive powdered pigment for paints called “ultramarine”. Today ultramarine is manufactured artificially. Although no longer the only source of lapis, Afghanistan still produces the finest quality material.

Sandra Kemppainen, Susan Fred.

Precious Gemstones - Sapphire

Sapphire is the most precious and valuable blue gemstone. It is a very desirable gemstone due to its excellent color, hardness, durability, and luster. In the gem trade, Sapphire without any color prefix refers to the blue variety of the mineral Corundum. 

However, the term Sapphire encompasses all other gem varieties and colors of Corundum as well.

Trace amounts of other elements such as iron, titanium, or chromium can give corundum blue, yellow, pink, purple, orange, or greenish color. Chromium impurities in corundum yield a red tint, and the resultant gemstone is called a ruby.

Photo: Logan sapphire with diamonds, National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC

Corundum: Corundum is best known for its gem varieties, Ruby and Sapphire. Ruby and Sapphire are scientifically the same mineral but just different colors. Ruby is the red variety, and Sapphire is the variety that encompasses all other colors, although the most popular and valued color of Sapphire is blue. Sapphire is also only used to describe the gem variety, otherwise it is simply called Corundum. Corundum is a very hard, tough, and stable mineral. For all practical purposes, it is the hardest mineral after Diamond, making it the second hardest mineral. It is also unaffected by acids and most environments.

Crystal structure of corundum, by NIMSoffice at en.wikipedia

The most valuable color of Sapphire is a cornflower blue color, known as Kashmir Sapphire or Cornflower Blue Sapphire. Another extremely valuable Sapphire form is the very rare, orange-pink Padparadschah. An exotic type of sapphire, known as Color Changing Sapphire, displays a different color depending on its lighting. In natural light, Color Changing Sapphire is blue, but in artificial light, it is violet. (This effect is the same phenomenon well-known in the gemstone Alexandrite). Yellow and pink Sapphire have recently become very popular, and are now often seen in jewelry.

Because of the remarkable hardness of sapphires (and of aluminum oxide in general), sapphires are used in some non-ornamental applications, including infrared optical components, such as in scientific instruments; high-durability windows (also used in scientific instruments); wristwatch crystals and movement bearings; and very thin electronic wafers, which are used as the insulating substrates of very special-purpose solid-state electronics (most of which are integrated circuits).

Sapphire was first synthesized in 1902. The process of creating synthetic Sapphire is known as the Verneuil process. Only experts can distinguish between natural and synthetic Sapphire.

Types of sapphires:

Color-Change Sapphire exhibits a different color in natural and artificial light.

Cornflower Blue Sapphire: sapphire with a cornflower-blue color, which can be better described as an intense, velvety-blue color. This term is often used in conjunction with Kashmir Sapphire to describe the Sapphire of that region, but it can also be used to describe any Sapphire with such color. 

Cornflower blue is the most desirable color in a Sapphire.

Fancy Sapphire  -   Describing any Sapphire with a color other than blue.

Kashmir Sapphire: has an intense, velvety-blue color, described from the Kashmir Province of India. Kashmir Sapphire is considered to have the finest color of all Sapphire.

Padparadschah: Orange-pink variety of Sapphire that is found in Sri Lanka; highly regarded and one of the most valuable forms of Sapphire.

Star Sapphire: a form of Sapphire displaying asterism in the form of a distinct, six-rayed star. 

False names:

You can also encounter gemstones that are called sapphire, but are not in fact sapphires. 

Brazilian Sapphire - Blue Tourmaline or Blue Topaz

Gold Sapphire - Lapis Lazuli with shiny Pyrite sprinkles

Hope Sapphire - Synthetic Blue Spinel

Lux Sapphire - Iolite

Lynx Sapphire - Iolite

Sapphire Quartz - Massive Blue Quartz or Chalcedony

Sapphire Spinel - Blue Spinel

Water Sapphire - Iolite

Uralian Sapphire - Blue Tourmaline.

Sapphire treatments and enhancements:  

Sapphire is usually heat treated to intensify the blue color, as well as remove inclusions to increase clarity. It is standard industry practice to heat treat 

Sapphire gemstones, and most Sapphires used as gemstones have been heat treated. 

Sapphire with a natural, unheated color is much more valuable then the heat treated material, and gemstones of good quality can be extremely costly.

Sapphires are sometimes colored through diffusion treatment, which artificially alters the color of the original gemstone. Diffused Sapphires colors include deep blue, bright yellow, bright orange and orange-red. 

Diffused Sapphire gemstones are fairly inexpensive.

Because of all the color treatments and enhancements performed to Sapphire gemstones, this information should always be fully disclosed to the buyer, and Sapphire should only be purchased from highly reputable dealers. 

Important Sapphire sources include Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Cambodia, Madagascar, Tanzania, Australia, and the U.S. (Montana). The Kashmir region of India/Pakistan was famous for its Kashmir-blue Sapphire, but little material comes

from there today.

Information collected and compiled from The Mineral and Gemstone Kingdom, www.minerals.net and Wikipedia.

Sandra Kemppainen, photos: Wikipedia, The Mineral and Gemstone Kingdom