Sri Lankan Sapphire

by Gary Roskin, G.G., FGA, Senior Editor -- JCK Online, 4/1/2005 2:00:00 AM

Sri Lanka, the West Virginia–size pear-shape island 40 miles southeast of India, has been a treasure trove of gems for more than a thousand years. Even as gem deposits from other locales come and go, the mines of Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, continue to produce fantastic gems.

Known for its sapphires, rubies, and chrysoberyl cat's-eyes, the island nation also produces some of the world's finest zircons, garnets, quartzes, topazes, and more.

"They're your classic Ceylon goods," says Jeffrey Bilgore, sapphire expert from New York, looking at his necklace of 49 sapphires set in platinum. "And they're all unheated except for the pinks, which could have been subjected to a low heat."

The phrase "unheated Ceylon" is rare and may be an oxymoron, considering that "traditional heating" originated in Sri Lanka, in the mid-1970s, with the heating of geuda sapphires. While the heating of almost all sapphires has been "traditional" since then, the influx of Madagascar sapphires into the Sri Lankan market has introduced another element of disclosure.

Colors of Sri Lanka. Pastels are the norm for Sri Lankan goods, including blue, pink, yellow, violet, purple, orange, and green, but the country does produce bright, saturated colors. In fact, many blue Ceylon sapphires have been set next to the finest Burma and Kashmir sapphires, simply because the colors matched.

Most Sri Lankan sapphires are heated. Merely stating that a stone is Sri Lankan implies heat treatment—or that it might be heated in the future. This is due in part to the local rough, which is commonly color-zoned. Heating evens out the color. It can also enhance the color. Madagascar sapphires look and react the same way, which is why there are Sri Lankan experts in Madagascar and Madagascar sapphires in Sri Lanka.

Of all the colors, nice greens are the most difficult to acquire. Some of the teal, aquamarine, peachy, and pinkish-orangey padparadscha are also hard to get, notes Bilgore. "The blues are not hard to find. It's just a matter of wanting to cut them into a round shape, which most people won't do."

Cut. It isn't uncommon to find that the cut of a Sri Lankan stone is less than ideal. Sri Lankan cutters often cut for weight, a practice born of centuries of working with color-zoned bipyramidal rough. "You will almost always see Ceylon goods cut as a cushion," says Bilgore. "This saves the most weight from the rough."

Buyers should examine cut stones to check their potential after recutting. "You must see what's inside the stone and what you can bring out by recutting," says Bilgore. "And then you have to be willing to take the risks and recut the stones."

One of the classic Sri Lankan weight-saving cuts shows all of the color in the culet—the remainder of the stone is colorless. Sri Lankan cutters understand that the face-up color is provided by the color in the culet and the weight and overall appearance is aided by retaining the colorless sapphire top.

Origin. When travel from one gem-mining area to another was extremely difficult, gem-locality names referred to color and quality unique to a particular deposit. "Ceylon" meant sky blue, "Burma" meant royal blue, and "Kashmir" meant cornflower blue. Locality names no longer have the same significance. "Sapphire, more than any other material in the better goods, overlaps in appearance," notes Bilgore. "Some of the Madagascar stones look like some of the best Burma stones you've ever seen in your life."

Buying Sri Lankan goods requires knowing your suppliers. Madagascar and East African goods are sent to Sri Lanka and processed together. Most dealers assemble parcels based on color matching, and blend in outside goods with the matching Sri Lankan goods.

Bilgore recalls a Sotheby's auction in the 1980s that presented a stunning sapphire necklace set with four top Kashmir sapphires and one Ceylon stone. Bilgore called it the best piece of sapphire jewelry he'd seen. "The fifth stone was as good as the other four."

Tsunami Relief for Sri Lanka

DRU Gems. David and Kim Beckett, wholesale jewelers and owners of DRU Gems International Inc., of Boerne, Texas, recently moved to Sri Lanka to be closer to the gem markets and miners. They spent Christmas day on the beach with their 4-year-old daughter. The tsunami struck the following day.

The numbers tell the story in Sri Lanka: 40,000 dead, 800,000 homeless. Freshwater wells around the island are contaminated, and food, water, and medicines are still in short supply. Many children need families.

The Becketts tell their own stories. They know of one family that lost their 14-year-old son who had gone to the beach with four relatives—all were killed. Their daughter's pediatrician lost a brother-in-law who went to get ice cream and never returned, and a niece who, thinking the house water tank had burst, ran outside and was carried out to sea. One friend sent his assistant home to Galle by train Dec. 26: The train was hit by the tsunami and more than a thousand passengers were killed.

Shock and fear are pervasive among the displaced. Relief efforts to identify orphans, scattered and living among other refugees, are difficult because they are afraid or are simply unable to deal with their situation.

David Beckett recently became interim national director for CERI, Children's Emergency Relief International, in Sri Lanka. CERI sees the long-term need for child care in post-tsunami Sri Lanka. "Just this week we received approval from the government to pilot foster care for up to 460 orphaned children with the hope of long-term adoption," Beckett says. If all goes well, they "will expand the program to include as many tsunami-orphaned children as we can. Over the next several months we will bring in teams of very qualified children's specialists for training purposes and foster-care program developers."

Kim Beckett has joined the Colombo Rotary Club, which organizes distribution of relief donations and provides a business-contacts network for suppliers of anything from utensils for relief kitchens to water pumps for purifying wells. Local gemstone businesspeople have been taking relief supplies to employees' homes and villages.

The Rotarians are developing a proposal to build permanent housing for tsunami victims to replace the 92,000 homes that were completely destroyed and repair the 20,000 that were partially damaged.

Through it all, say the Becketts, Sri Lankans have been unfailingly gracious and hospitable. DRU Gems has committed a percentage of its 2005 profits to rebuilding Sri Lanka's devastated coastal communities. Readers can e-mail the Becketts at DKBeckett@aol.com or visit www.DRUgems.com.

Jeffrey Bilgore also has been contributing to relief efforts to aid victims of the tsunami, mainly through personal contacts. He has also committed a certain amount of proceeds from sales to the people involved with relief efforts such as rebuilding schools and homes. Says Bilgore, "I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do."

How Can You Help? U.S. retailers can help by not abandoning Sri Lanka's gemstone industry. "It would be a double tragedy for the international community to become sluggish in their import of gemstones from these countries that have already lost so much from the tsunami disaster," says David Beckett. "U.S. retailers can show their support in two ways: donating to relief agencies and designating those funds to the tsunami relief, and by continuing to use their purchasing power to import such natural treasures as Sri Lankan gemstones. Buying from these Asian countries strengthens their economies from the inside out, which has a long-lasting impact to helping."

AGTA, GIA, AGS, JA, and ICA Join Efforts. Responding to the call for aid in Southern Asia, the American Gem Trade Association, American Gem Society, Gemological Institute of America, Jewelers of America, and International Colored Gemstone Association are requesting support: Donate to Save the Children, a nonprofit organization aiding children and families, to provide relief through its Asia Earthquake/Tidal Wave Relief Fund. The organizations hope that by joining together and working through Save the Children the industry can offer unified support. As a courtesy, Save the Children has agreed to track industry donations: Reference JIRF (Jewelers Industry Relief Fund) whether you pledge online, by mail, or telephone. Visit www.savethechildren.org.uk for more information.

CIBJO. The World Jewellery Confederation is also joining other industry organizations to ask for support in relief efforts. Gaetano Cavalieri, CIBJO president, recommends donating to the following organizations: American Red Cross, www.redcross.org; CARE, www.care.org; Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), www.doctorswithoutborders.org; Medair International Humanitarian Aid Organization, www.medair.org; OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), ochaonline.un.org; Oxfam, www.oxfam.org.uk; UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees), www.unhcr.ch; UNICEF, www.unicef.org; and WHO (World Health Organization), www.who.int/en.