Deep Blue Sea

Round two of my blog takes me to a place where I enjoy going to. The deep blue seas of Santa Maria. Well, actually that would take me to one of the ‘most important religious centers’ in Barcelona, Espania. What I’m talking about is the Santa Maria Aquamarine which comes from the Brazilian Santa Maria de Itabira Mine. The Santa Maria Aquamarine. It’s the Ferrari of Aqua’s. If you’re a fan of the Aquamarine, this specific brand of Aqua is the most sought-after color due to the deep ocean blue color it has, hence the reference to my title of this blog (I was a bit creative with that one, I know). Aquamarine is, not too surprisingly, associated with water, (duh!) hence the ‘aqua’ in aquamarine. Anyway, it’s been known as a gem that bring sailors good luck and fortune. So if you’re willing to trade in that old rabbit’s foot and go for a more expensive style of luck, the aquamarine is the gemstone for you!

I came across a nice piece of aquamarine rough that I purchased a long time ago, and I decided to have a go at it. Any rough you deal with, you have to map out where you’re slicing and dicing in order to avoid the inclusions that, a) can crack the stone while pre-forming or faceting, or b)can bring the value down. After I Google mapped my aqua rough, I started to slice this thing up in order to get to my next step – Pre-forming. It’s the next phase when you start to shape the piece of rough on a lapidary disk. I decided to go with two trillion-cuts and two cushion-cuts. Take a look at the image below so you get an idea of how the rough looks like and the preformed aquamarines I just cut. Notice the deep blue color before I start faceting and opening up windows on the stone.

I started to facet the aqua and I just went with a standard table and I decided to cut the pavilion (the bottom of the stone) into a Portuguese cut (most Brazilian gem cutters like to cut the pavilion this way, hence the name of the cut). More facets the better. You could cut it into a step cut which is traditional but what’s done is done and my word, did the brilliance and the deep ocean blue, Santa Maria color come out! Don’t mind my photography skills on this piece but it’s one of those moments that ‘you have to see it to believe it’ and that’s how nice this thing came out. In terms of perfection, the aqua has some small inclusions in it but still a pretty clean stone and a beauty of a color. So if there are any casual sea entrepreneurs out there reading this blog, this is the stone to bring you luck out on the ‘seven seas.’ Till next time…