3 Colored Gemstone Engagement Rings for the Alternative Bride

1. 3 Colored Gemstone Engagement Rings for the Alternative Bride Today’s bride is quite unconventional and her engagement ring should follow suit. For the fashion-forward, unconventional and design-loving woman, the traditional diamond engagement ring is most likely not the piece that jumps to mind when dreaming about her engagement ring. Enter the fine-quality colored gemstones. Only these extra-special stones have the quality to stand the test of time and the expressive beauty to capture the non-traditional bride, especially when set in a custom-made fine jewelry piece. Here, 3 colored gemstone engagement rings - chic and unique for your ever after - to consider. 1- High & Mighty Blue Sapphire These exquisite blue gemstones have traditionally adorned emperors, kings and queens. In fact, royalty have given blue sapphires over diamonds as engagement rings because they’re known to be far rarer than diamonds. The stone symbolizes nobility, sincerity, truth and faithfulness. Its striking blue is the standard against which all other blue gemstones (such as blue topaz or tanzanite) are measured against and is considered the most desirable blue.

2. Queen Maxima of the Netherlands at the inauguration wearing some stunning blue sapphires and Lady Di wearing her blue sapphire engagement ring. Besides its rich history, it’s the quality and rarity of sapphires that makes them ‘high and mighty’ and sets them apart from most other gemstones. Their ability to withstand scratches from daily wear and tear is practically unrivalled - except for the hardest material on earth, the diamond - and their excellent resistance to breaking and chipping even surpasses that of a diamond! In other words, this is an extraordinary gemstone for a dream engagement ring. Although sapphires come in a range of candy-colored hues, ranging from deep blue to neon pink, purple, yellow and orange hues, the most covetable of all remains the famous Kashmir blue sapphire. These stones were found in the remote Great Himalayan mountains of northwestern India in the 1800s and came mostly in a superb ‘cornflower blue’ color.

3. The famous mine has been exhausted since the 1920s but some stones can still be found in the market very occasionally. This stone will remain out of reach for most of us unfortunately and prices can easily be 10x more than blue sapphires from other regions. Fear not, there are other beauties out there! I was asked to source a 5 carat blue sapphire for one of my customers and came across the below 3 blue beauties at my gem dealers office in Bangkok. The left one was the stone for my client, a large, natural, untreated blue sapphire from Sri Lanka. It took me more than 6 months to find it… it’s that rare. Once I’d obtained it, we worked together on a custom-made fine jewelry piece in my French-owned atelier and created a beautiful bespoke ring with it.

4. Photo credit: Eva Gems & Jewels Why you'll love this stone? It’s: * vivid, intensely saturated and extraordinary blue; * soft & velvety in color due to delicate, intersecting ‘inclusions’ inside the stone; * incredibly durable because of its great hardness and toughness; * the historic stone of kings and queens. 2. Stun in Spinel Another unconventional, outstanding gemstone that is perfect for a custom-made fine jewelry piece, especially an engagement ring, is the spinel. A rare gemstone very few people in the West know of, and one that you don’t want to miss out on. For centuries, spinel has been mistaken for ruby and regarded as such in Europe’s crown jewels. It wasn’t until 1783 that the French mineralogist Jean Baptiste Louis Rome de Lisle distinguished spinel as a different mineral from ruby. And this high-quality gemstone has often been underappreciated ever since. Luckily this has changed, and the most exclusive, high jewelry houses in the world (think, Chopard, Chaumet, Christian Dior, Chanel) use this gemstone in their one-of-a-kind high jewelry collections today.

5. The Black Prince’s 'ruby' - or red spinel I should say - is set in England’s Imperial State Crown and displayed in the Tower of London. Only much later, did researchers realise that the main red stone in the crown was not a ruby, but in fact a spinel... The main historic source of red and pink spinels has been in modern day Afghanistan and Tajikistan. But spinel has also long been mined in Sri Lanka and Burma. Newer mines with spinels that rival the intense red and pink colors commonly associated with the famous Burmese spinels, can now be found in Tanzania and Madagascar. Like sapphire, spinel also belongs to the world’s top gemstones, called ‘fine-quality gemstones’. With a good resistance to scratches and breaking & chipping, a wonderful brilliant sparkle, great clarity, their common lack of treatments and a menu of dazzling colors to choose from, spinel is a favorite stone among gem dealers and collectors. The alternative bride may want to join that select insider group of spinel enthusiasts especially when she likes colors, such as intense traffic light red, neon pink, cobalt blue or the more romantic pink-orange hue. On the other hand, if she’s more into light colors like glamorous greys, silver blue, lavender, lilac and pastels colors, spinel is also the right fit for her… and her dazzling one-of-a-kind engagement ring. I made a one-of-a-kind ring with a light grey spinel as centre stone, with ice blue spinels on the side and the whole surrounded by twisted diamonds. The light, icy colors combined with the unique design make it stand out from other colored gemstone engagement rings.

6. Exquisite light grey spinel as centre stone, flanked by 2 rare ice blue spinels and small diamonds twisted around it set in 18K white gold by Eva Gems & Jewels. Fall in love with this stone for its: * stunning colors ranging from traffic light red, to orange and hot neon pink. Other attractive colors are softer pastels and lavender blues, pinks and glamorous light greys; * great ‘hardness’ (meaning the stone doesn’t scratch easily) and transparency. Spinels are often far cleaner inside the stone than rubies. This adds to their excellent sparkling brilliance, and makes them belong to the top jewelry gemstones; * historic status of being worn by emperors and kings in ancient times, both in the East and West. Magnificent pieces can be found in one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces by houses such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Piaget and Christian Dior Haute Joaillerie. 3. Enthralling Electric Paraiba Tourmaline Paraiba, a state in Brazil, was the place where this rare and gorgeous neon-colored gemstone was first discovered not that long ago, in 1989.

7. The Paraiba in the middle steals the show. From the collection of Eva Gems & Jewels. The moment these stones were discovered, people fell for this incredibly vivid blue, turquoise or green stone - which seemed to glow from within – causing the per carat price to go up pretty quickly. This was further intensified by the fact that the mine was exhausted quite soon after. Luckily, very similar material has been discovered in Mozambique and Nigeria around 2000 which is where most of this incredibly gemstone comes from today. Source:https://evagemsandjewels.com/getting-engaged-skip-the-diamond-heres-why/ To give you an idea of its rarity, for ev Paraiba tourmaline. And this stone can easily fetch five figures per carat. ery 10,000 diamonds that are mined, they find 1 gem-quality Almost all the Paraibas you find now on the market are from Mozambique and despite this origin, gem labs around the world still have the right to call it a ‘Paraiba tourmaline’ - even though it doesn’t come from Brazil - when the lab gemologists regard the color of the stone as “electric” or “vivid” blue or green and when their lab tests conclude it contains the chemical elements of both copper and manganese (which are responsible for its incredible color). I have only a very small selection of paraiba tourmalines in my collection and with one of them, we made a custom-made engagement ring for one of my clients. (Of course, She said yes to the stone!).

8. The minimalistic custom-made engagement ring set with the rare Paraiba tourmaline A note of care regarding this exceptional stone: it can have some ‘inclusions’ inside the stone (normal for this gem) – which means you’ll need to be careful how & where you wear it but its hypnotizing color is not something the non-traditional bride would want to miss. Why love this stone? It’s: * An out-of-this-world neon or ‘electric’ blue, green or violet color. Some people may even think its color isn't real, it's that intense. * A relatively young and rare discovery, so you can be sure to be one of the very few on earth wearing it… * Often considered more special than any other green tourmaline because of its exquisite color saturation, generally more attractive color and greater rarity. * A good 'hard' stone - so, it doesn’t scratch easily - but commonly can be included, which makes it more fragile. (Note that every gemstone has their own care instructions, including diamonds, whose fair-to-good toughness means you need to be careful to not let a diamond drop on a stone floor as it can break perfectly…). And if you’re not sure where to start on your bespoke engagement ring journey and like personal guidance from a gemologist and fine jewelry designer, get in touch with Eva here or take her Quiz “Discover your Gem” and instantly discover the perfect gemstone for you.