By
Ashley Bailey, Sunday, August 06, 2006 12:00 AM
If you take a vacation in a Caribbean port of call like Aruba or St. Maartens, you’ll see jewelry stores with names like Diamonds International and Colombian Emeralds International. They’ve been around a long time.
Now there is a new chain of Caribbean jewelry stores: Tanzanite International. You heard right. There is a chain of stores which specializes in tanzanite, a brown zoisite turned a permanent sapphire-blue through heating that is found only in Tanzania.
Pause here and ask yourself the following: Why wouldn’t someone first open a store called Sapphires International? After all, that is the world’s oldest and most popular blue gem.
It is a tribute to tanzanite’s sudden but solid fame that a chain of stores selling it could become successful.
Ever wonder why the Pope wears an amethyst ring? Well, this purple quartz has been associated with chastity, sobriety and virtue since the Greeks named this gem amethystos, which means, literally, uninfluenced by alcohol. Later, the Romans had a myth involving a virgin named Amethyst who was turned into a quartz statue to keep her from being ravished by a drunken god.
As with so many things Roman, the Catholic Church adopted amethyst as a ring stone to be worn by high-ranking officials as a symbol of their commitment to celibacy and purity.
The royalty of Europe shared similar festeem for amethyst. That’s why since 1661 the largest gem in the royal orb of England’s crown jewels has been an amethyst. That’s also why a 1,305-carat octagonal amethyst is mounted into the throne of Denmark. When this behemoth was purchased, it cost a king’s ransom. Today, when amethyst is one of the most abundant and affordable gems, it is hard to believe that to was a extremely expensive until found in massive quantities in South America during the 19th century.
Despite its lack of rarity, amethyst remains a highly prized gem. In April 1996, an amethyst necklace that had belonged to Jackie Kennedy sold at Sotheby’s for $55,000. And Princess Diana kept a two-foot tall amethyst on her desk.
No wonder this purple quartz has been the February birthstone for centuries. It is also the state gem of South Carolina, designated as such in 1969 after a lovely specimen of this material was praised as the world’s finest by the curator of the Smithsonian Institution.
Today, most amethyst is mined in Brazil, Uruguay and Zambia. Yet the top color of this gem is still described as “Siberian,” after a long-defunct Ural Mountain deposit that was in operation less than a century.
Amethyst, the most valuable and prized member of the quartz family, is the birthstone of February and the zodiacal gem of Pisces (February 19 to March 20).
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