Sri Lanka The Gem Island

"The island produces rubies more beautiful & valuable than we found in any other part of the world, & likewise sapphires, topazes, amethysts, garnets & many other precious stones. The king is supposed to possess the grandest ruby that ever was seen being a span in length & thickness of a man's arm, brilliant beyond description & without single flaw. It has the appearance of a glowing fire & upon the whole is so valuable that no estimation can be made of its worth in money. The grand Khan, Kublai, sent ambassadors to this monarch, with a special request that he would yield to him the possession of this ruby in return for which he should receive the value of a city, this offer was turned down" Marco Polo

"The marvellous rubies called bahraman (carbuncles) are found only in this town. Some are taken from the channel, & these are regarded by them as the most valuable, & some are obtained by digging. In the island of Ceylon rubies are found in all parts. The land is a private property, & a man buys a parcel of it & digs for rubies. He finds white stones, deeply cracked, & it is inside these that the rubies are formed. He gives them to lapidaries who scrape them down until they split away from the ruby stones. Some of them are red, some yellow, & some blue. Their custom is that all rubies of the value of a hundred fanams belong to the king, who pays their price & take them; those of less value belong to the finders. A hundred fanams equal in value six gold dinars.

All the women in the island of Ceylon have necklaces of rubies of different colours & wear them also on their arms & legs in place of bracelets & anklets. The king's girls make a network of rubies & wear it in their heads. I have seen on the forehead of the while elephant seven ruby stones each larger than a hen's egg..." Iban Battutah

Ratnadeepa

The tropical island of Sri Lanka was once known as the "island of gems' (Ratnadeepa) because of the spectacular range of jewels found in its gravelly soil. It is most famous for its lovely sapphires now branded & marketed by the name "Ceylon Sapphires", but it also produces ruby, garnet, alexandrite, spinel, zircon, perodot, topaz, tourmaline, moonstone & a highly-prized chrysoberyl cat's eye. Gems are found throughout central & southern Sri Lanka. But large scale mining is concentrated in the Ratnapura (city of gems, Ratna meaning gem & Pura meaning city in Sinhalese) & Elahera areas. Sri Lankan gems are found in the crown jewels of Europe & in artefacts from China's Min Dynasty tombs. Historians trace Sri Lanka's international gem trade back to 500 BC.

Ratnapura

Blue Sapphires
Sri Lanka's Blue Sapphires are the finest in the world. The Blue Sapphire is second only to the diamond in hardness & is highly prized. Accordingly to the experts, Blue Sapphires with colours called "corn flower blue" & "royal blue tint" are of the finest quality. Sri Lanka's Gem Corporation exhibits a 93 carat Blue Sapphire of "cornflower blue".

Star Sapphires
The 362 carat Star Sapphire being exhibited at the Sri Lanka's Gem Corporation is third largest Star Sapphire of such quality & colour. The most celebrated star sapphire of Sri Lanka called "Star of Bombay' is on permanent exhibition at Smithsonian museum of Natural history in New York.

"... and by some distressing impertinence the splendid Star Sapphire which is one of the glories of American Museum of Natural History's gem collection is called the Star of Bombay-not as it should be-the Star of Ceylon." Arthur C. Clarke

Heat treated Rubies & Sapphires
It is estimated that 90% of the rubies & sapphires in the world market today undergo heat treatment, a permanent process widely accepted by the gem trade. Sapphires are so common in Sri Lanka that the palest, least valuable gems were once used in ornamental rock gardens or buried under the posts of village homes for a blessing. These low quality sapphires, known as "gueda", were not suitable for setting into jewellery. But in the 1970s, Thai gem dealers perfected a heat treatment process that transformed the worthless gueda into valuable gems. By "cooking" the stones at high temperatures, they worked a kind of alchemy. The titanium dissolved & mixed better with the iron, deepening the blue colour of the geuda. The Thais then experimented on different coloured sapphires & rubies, & learned that a valuable sapphire or ruby could be made even more valuable by "burning" out slight flaws. The process is risky as certain stones may crack, melt or explode. In some cases, the gems lose all their colour.

Padparadscha
The padparadscha is the most prized of the "fancy", non-blue sapphires. Padparadscha is a Sinhalese word derived from the Sanskrit "padmaraga", meaning lotus flower, & was first applied to sapphires in 1847. While lotus flowers occur in many colours, the original species is pinkish orange. A padparadscha sapphire is a delicate blend of these two colours. The effect is breathtaking-as magical as a tropical sunsets, padparadscha sapphires are exceedingly rare. Some sellers may try to pass off a pink sapphire as a padpardscha, but a true padparadscha calls for a harmonious blend of both colours, spread in a light, even tone throughout the stone. A stone may exhibit this perfect mix of colour when viewed from above, but when viewed from the side, shows a distinct separation of tones. Such a gem is simply a fancy sapphire & not the more valuable padparadscha. Many connoisseurs believe that a padparadscha sapphire can only come from Sri Lanka