Category: Gems and Jewels

The Chocolate Lover’s Jewelry Box: Chocolate Pearls

This next resident of our hypothetical ‘chocolate’ jewelry box is best approached with more than a teaspoonful of caveat emptor caution: chocolate pearls. The most important thing to remember about pearls that are advertised or popularly regarded as “chocolate” is that 99.9% of them have been dyed or bleached in order to achieve that color.…

Black Opals: Are They All Truly Natural?

Although opal is often regarded as the ‘Queen of Gems’ there is also – as in any royal family – a recognized hierarchy among them. As examined in my Opals, Real and Faux post, the top honors for both rarity and beauty are accorded to the black opals, especially those found in the Lightning Ridge…

Jewels That Play With Light: Mysterious Moonstone, Luminous Labradorite and Scintillating Sunstone

Second in my series on jewels that play with light is the mysterious moonstone, along with its two ‘sisters’, labradorite and sunstone. All three are feldspar stones, a family that comprises about 60% of all minerals found on earth. A shared characteristic of all the feldspars is that their internal structure is crystalline. It’s this…