BLUE SPINEL              

Blue Spinel

The weathered faces of the local miners recall days … no… years of burning sun and torrential rains. Their hands are calloused, the skin marked forever by the blows they have struck with hammers and the monotonous sieving of grit and water. Their eyes search ceaselessly, peering into the riverbed when shoveling, when panning, when wading and occasionally, just occasionally, their eyes will see something precious gleaming in the gravel.Real pay-dirt! While other gems, or what will one day become gems, are picked out of the sieve as muddy lumps and fractured pebbles, these large, translucent, clear crystals stand out

even in this roughest stage of rough, already giving clear notice of the fine, lustrous treasures that, once faceted, these deep, iron blue stones will become. Gem-quality blue spinel is the result of intense metamorphic processes. Cobalt is its main coloring agent, even though iron is predominant in its chemical composition. Burma, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Madagascar produce the largest numbers of these spinel that are generally medium to dark in tone, have strong to vivid saturation and of a blue to grayish and violetish hue. Unlike red or green gems,blue stones are often clean and large. Rich and solemn, mysterious and ingenious – Napoleon blue, royal blue, navy blue, denim blue – it is a color of both the Court and the people. More holistic than that, though, the blue of a spinel is the blue of the soul.
(Chapter from the Book “Gemstones. Terra Connoisseur” by Vladyslav Yavorskyy)