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Color
Facts
The determining factors that give a gemstone its quality and
value are made according to the rules of
the "4 Cs":
Color, Clarity, Cut, and Carat Weight.
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Unlike
the colored spectrums of fancy sapphire, garnet and
tourmaline, Topaz
offers its rainbow of color at a fraction of the price.
Yet for all this it lacks none of the class, having
absorbed the attention of Royal Family’s from Portugal to Russia
and beyond.
Scintillating Topaz
shines out in a rainbow of color that radiates virtually
ever nuance under the sun: blue, yellow, orange, pink,
red, green, white, multi-colored…In fact, as far as
color and Topaz
goes, the sky’s the limit!
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Blue
Topaz
Of
all T opaz’s colors it’s the celestial splendor of blue
that is the most popular: In America today, this is
the top selling semi-precious gem. Blue Topaz,
offering some of the best value of all blue gemstones,
comes in three principal shades: ‘ Sky Blue’, ‘Swiss
Blue’ and ‘London Blue.’ These colors are enhanced from
treating naturally occurring colorless, or very pale
Blue Topaz,
with a process of radiation followed by heat. However,
the term enhancement should not scare a potential buyer
off: This method simply mirrors the exact same processes
of nature, taking them one step further. To learn more
about this harmless process, please read ‘How Does Blue
Topaz
Get Its Color?’ |
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Imperial Topaz
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Imperial Topaz
denotes colors that vary from a blend of orange, pink
and red. Perhaps the most popular of all the Topaz
family, it is supposed that it received its moniker
from the Russian Czars in the 19th century. At this
time, the rich orange-pink Topaz,
sourced from closely guarded deposits located in Russia’s
Ural Mountains, was to be exclusively mounted into the
personal jewelry of the Czarinas: Today, Imperial Topaz
is available to all. The majority of this truly spectacular
gem is exported from the mines of Ouro Preto in Brazil.
Imperial Topaz
derives its red and pink coloration from chromium, and
is sometimes gently heated to further enhance the rosy-red
to pink hue in the gem.
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White
Topaz
‘Colorless
Topaz’,
or ‘White Topaz’,
is Topaz in the purest sense of the word, having no
impurities present to give it color. Sometimes referred
to as ‘Silver Topaz’
it has been sourced as crystals from the Russian Ural
Mountains, Siberia and as water-worn stones from alluvial
deposits in river and creek beds in Diamantina and Minas
Novas in the state of Minas Gerias, Brazil. A spectacular example
was the ‘Braganza Diamond’, so called after its crystal
clear aspect, possessing a fire so brilliant that when
Portuguese gem savants mounted the 1680-carat Colorless Topaz
into the Portuguese Crown Jewels, they thought they
had found the world’s largest diamond. Colorless Topaz
is also found in the U.S. states of Utah, Colorado,
California, it is also sourced in Mexico and Japan. |
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‘Rainbow,’ ‘Alaskan’ and ‘Caribbean Topaz’
are just some of the aliases that ‘Mystic Topaz’ is
known by. This is one of the newest and most popular
gemstones
available in the gem and jewelry world today. Mystic
Topaz
is made by taking Colorless Topaz,
and coating it with metallic titanium oxides, similar
to the coatings on camera lenses. This produces an iridescent
quality across the gems
surface, much like the light reflected off soap bubbles,
yielding a variety of rainbow-like colors.
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Pink Topaz
The occurrence of Pink Topaz
is the rarest, after the dark blues and vivid reds,
in all the Topaz
family. Fine pink Topaz
occurs naturally in the Katlang area in northern Pakistan,
it is also produced by gently heating Brazilian brown
to yellow chromium rich crystals.
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Yellow Topaz
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Although it appears in a multitude of different colors
and nuances, yellow is often the most common color associated
with Topaz.
The Topaz
of today originally appeared in the 1700’s, and was
sourced from Schneckenstein, in the Saxony region of
East Germany. This deposit yielded hundreds of kilos
of Yellow Topaz
until the discovery of other deposits later that same
century in Ouro Preto, Brazil. Although Brazil still
provides the majority of the supply of Golden Yellow
Topaz
today, the world’s demand is for the more popular, and much rarer Pink
Topaz.
Brazilian Yellow Topaz
is often changed to a pale rose pink by heating. The
heating and cooling of the gem must be done |
very carefully and slowly, but the operation presents
no difficulty to an expert, and the pink color when
secured is absolutely permanent. A fine saffron-yellow
variety, called ‘Indian Topaz,’
is sourced
from Sri Lanka. |
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