I have been working on a tray that my son organized after the last gem and mineral show that the Carnegie Museum did in Pittsburgh. The green ovals are nice and there is a sprinkling of blues, but most of it is not exceptional. Then I found this GREEN oval. It maybe the best green tourmaline outside of cuprian tourmaline and “chrome” tourmaline in the collection.
The oval has a medium dark tone and a clean body. Its color is a great green that is not yellowish or bluish or dichroic. It is probably cut with its table perpendicular to the c axis. This blends both dichroic colors together. I say probably because this jewel been out of sight and out of mind for years. Buried in a whole tray of green did not do it justice, but I won’t forget it now.
It weighs a very nice 2.98 carats. Really fires up in incandescent, but is still a looker in natural light. Not a flaw in sight to mark this beauty.
Bruce
About Bruce Fry
I was born in Summit, NJ in 1947 and graduated from Summit High School in 1966. I graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in 1970 and after spending another year in graduate school, I left to see the world of Brazil. After spending some more time discovering myself, I ended up working for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 32 years as an Air Quality Engineer in the Department of Environmental Protection. I retired in 2007 and took up faceting gemstones again after a long hiatus that reached back to my twenties. I had started cutting cabochons when I was 13 and bought my first faceting machine when I was 15, but ran out of money and time until I retired.
My great love in gemology is tourmaline and the collection presented here represents my effort to get as much beauty and variety in the colors of tourmaline as I can. I was particularly lucky in being able to get unheated cuprian tourmaline before copper was discovered in gem grade tourmaline from Mozambique.
