THE WORLD OF COLORFUL GEMSTONES

Written by Poppy

Anpé Atelier is a world of colors, and we’re on a mission to make fine jewellery more colorful and playful. Anpé Atelier is challenging the traditional fine jewellery mindset and changes the focus from diamonds to colorful sapphires and other colored gemstones. Diamonds can still be found in Anpé designs, however they will always be secondary to the colorful gems.

We absolutely LOVE colorful gemstones, and since it’s the primary part of Anpé jewellery, we wanted to introduce you to the 6 gemstone species, we mainly work with.

Sapphire

Sapphire is the absolute main stone we’re working with. The reason can be found in two incredible features: First of all sapphires come in all colors of the rainbow, which most people are actually not aware of. A lot of people think sapphire is mainly blue or pink, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. You can find it incredible green, sparkling yellow, clean white,  beautiful brown, ocean like teals, insane purple and of course incredible blue and amazing pink.

Some sapphires holds a mix of colors in a single stone, and are known as bi-color or parti sapphires.

A very rare and valuable sapphire comes in form of the padparadscha sapphire, which has an incredibly beautiful orange pink color. And another rare and crazy version of the sapphire is the colorchanging sapphire, which displays different colors depending on the light it’s in.

On top of that, sapphires have incredible hardness, durability and luster, which makes it an excellent choice for everyday jewellery. It’s the second hardest gemstone in the world – only overruled by diamonds.

Sapphire is the birthstone of September.

Pink sapphire set with diamond and tanzanite in 18k rose gold

Tourmaline

Another very colorful gemstone is the tourmaline, which can be found in a wide variety of beautiful colors. It is a semi-precious gemstone, and bicolored and multi colored effects are not unusual. You can even get watermelon tourmalines, which hold a green color at one end and pink at the other. Oh, how nature works, right!

We work mainly with pink and green tourmalines in different pink and green varieties in a class by themselves. The amazing colors and a good hardness are the main reasons, why we love this gemstone so much.

Tourmaline is the birthstone of October.

Tsavorite

Tsavorites are a variety of garnet, but pricewise it lies way higher than other garnets. Tsavorites hold amazing green colors ranging from light green to green and over to dark and deep green. It is much rarer than emeralds, and lately it is often preferred over emeralds. Emeralds often have loads of inclusions, that can make them rather fragile, whereas tsavorites has a good toughness.

Tsavorites are therefore much more resistant to breakage compared to emerald, and they have no inclusions. Often tsavorites are not treated either, whereas emeralds usually are treated with oils. It is therefore a preferred gemstone, as it is durable enough for all types of jewellery – if you treat them properly.

As tsavorite is a variety of garnet, it is the birthstone of January.

Spinel

Spinel is also (surprise) a semiprecious gemstone, that comes in so many different colors. Spinel is actually colorless from natures hand, but they hold impurities, and these impurities give the beautiful gemstone a wide variety of colors.

The most famous spinel holds a very deep red, that is very close to ruby – and it can be pretty difficult to tell to two apart. Blood red spinels are actually even more rare than ruby in the same color range.

However you can also find spinels in yellow, pink, blue, white etc., but we work mainly with the deep black and blue-black spinels, as these have the most insane deep black and sometimes blue black colors.

Spinel is the birthstone of August.

Anpé Gems

All of our gemstones are handpicked and carefully selected. We work very closely with our suppliers to ensure, that the gemstones are sourced under good conditions for the people working there.

If you’re looking to do a custom piece with a birthstone, a favourite color or a favourite gem, send us an e-mail at [email protected] – we love to make your colorful dreams come true. For more inspiration you can also check out our Instagram or Pinterest profiles.