Clear Vivid Green Natural Emeralds

What makes Clear, Vivid Green Natural Emeralds Fine (and Available)?

I have always been interested and curious when customers drop by and complain they have been shopping all over and have not found any emeralds that are either a fine deep vivid green color and or emeralds which are fairly clear, or both. Because of this, customers believe that fine quality emeralds must be either cloudy or a pale green or an overly dark blackish green color. Of course this is not the case, but it does reveal the dearth of modern jewelers who carry emeralds of fine quality. Because of this, even the definition of what makes emerald fine changes over time, simply because so few are easily seen in stores. The answer to all this is really simple: nature does in fact grow fine and ultra fine and rare emeralds, the color of vivid green and clear as the finest glass from Italy. And yes, they can be pricey, and because of this, few jewelers in 2017 sell them. But they are available, like the gorgeous emerald seen in this pendant. This emerald does not exhibit the rarest green, even though it is plenty fine and beautiful, but it is extremely clear to the naked eye, causing the green to “glisten” with reflected and refracted light.

Another challenge these days lies in the multiple methods of changing emerald color and clarity in a laboratory, which definitely makes the stone more beautiful and saleable. These changes must be disclosed to a buyer, under United States federal law. In other countries, especially when consumers shop from ships docking in ports, disclosure of laboratory treatment to improve emerald may not need to be disclosed. Invasive treatments to improve emerald are good and bad: the good is they make a natural stone more beautiful. The bad is that they are difficult to detect, and often make the natural emerald less expensive than a synthetic emerald, totally grown in a laboratory, and having the same structure, optics and chemistry as the real thing. It is heart-breaking to tell a customer that he/she has accidentally purchased an emerald treated by dye and or by forcing glass through its fractures into the center of the stone, causing light to “walk around” the natural inclusions, hiding them from our eyes.

All of us have to pay for very fine quality colored stones … vivid green and clear emeralds, pure crimson red rubies and many others. But the fact is, they do grow naturally, are available without the seriously invasive lab treatments to make them appear better, and because of this, the definition of what makes a colored gemstone “fine” should remain unchanged … permanently.