Sapphire is September’s beautiful birthstone, and I have several lovely blue sapphire pieces available for sale in my Etsy shop. Sapphire is one of the few precious gemstones (the others are diamond, ruby, emerald, and tanzanite.)
Sapphire is a gemstone variety of the mineral corundum. Ruby is the red variety of corundum, and the term “sapphire” applies to any other color of gemstone corundum. Sapphires form in just about every color, including white, pink, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and black. Blue sapphire gets its color from trace amounts of the ions Fe2+ and Ti4+. Corundum forms in aluminum-rich, silica-poor geologic environments such as pegmatites (very coarse-grained granite), and contact zones between limestone and intrusive igneous rocks.
Corundum is one of the hardest gemstones, with a harndess of 9 on Moh’s hardness scale (where diamond is a 10).
From mineralminers.com: “Corundum is said to enhance one’s creativity, self-confidence, awareness, intuition and ambition. It is also said to help release negative emotions in constructive ways while giving inner peace.”
micheledodge
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