On a hotel patio in Manhattan, Erica Silverglide pops open a membrane box and passes this reporter a gold ring. In her other hand is a pocket ultraviolet (UV) flashlight. Under its beam, a few things happen.
Three bicolor tourmalines stay as they are, pink blushing into yellow, while the surrounding diamonds light up with a characteristic blue due to fluorescence. Roughly one-quarter to one-third of diamonds graded by GIA glow like this under UV light, a trait called fluorescence, caused by traces of nitrogen trapped in the stone.
Silverglide, aka GemologyGeek, bought those unheated Brazilian bicolor tourmalines at the Tucson shows about five years ago. These stones, like many others (she’s a gem dealer), went out on memo. Again and again, the consigned tourmalines came back. “No one would ever buy them,” she says. “And I could not figure out why.”
Eventually she approached a jeweler she’d been working with for a long time. Earlier this year she set the stones into a ring, along with the fluorescent diamonds; that ring set Ignite, her first collection, into motion.
The one-of-a-kind collection debuted in January and has since grown from a handful of pieces to more than 30 rings, pendants, charms, and earrings. Each piece is built around fluorescence, the glow some gems give off under UV light or strong natural daylight.
For decades, the diamond trade treated that glow as a defect. Dealers in the 1970s discounted “milky” fluorescent stones, and after an over-grading scandal in South Korea in the early 1990s, fluorescent diamonds took a lasting price hit. Silverglide recalls trade coverage of the era dismissing fluorescent diamonds as a poor man’s stone. Now GIA is set to add comments to its reports this quarter, indicating fluorescence “may enhance the diamond’s appearance.”
In colored stones, a strong glow often adds value: Think of rubies, or the extremely fluorescent neon pink Burmese spinels dealers call “jedi.” (Its Tanzanian rival, Mahenge, is another story.)
“Fluorescence was one of these things that got massively criticized,” Silverglide says.
The Spark That Ignited a Collection
Ignite is also the first collection with her name on it.
Despite studying jewelry design and designing right out school, she’s spent much of her career trading gems. Silverglide earned a graduate gemologist diploma at GIA, and worked as the main buyer at Judith Ripka, as well as in production at David Yurman. Eventually she built GemologyGeek into an education and sourcing business.
“I never thought in a million years I was going to be a designer,” she says.
Her father always wanted her to have a collection. After he died in early 2025, she struggled to focus, and color was what grounded her.
One day she spread out every stone she owned, and played the way she used to on her childhood bedroom floor. “This wonder came back to me,” she says.
Going through her inventory, she realized she had been almost accidentally buying sets of three: center stones and matched pairs, gathered over years of dealing.
Those sets include a trio of violet spinels, perfectly matched—“which is much easier said than done”—and a kite-cut chrysoberyl whose matching side stones were found years later.
One ring, named Eloise, sets rainbow moonstone with unheated pink sapphires in 18k rose gold, and both stones fluoresce.
Silverglide sorts every accent diamond herself under UV and keeps only stones with medium or strong fluorescence that match. “When I need 2 carats of 1 millimeter stones,” she says, “I take hours going through hundreds of carats.”
The rings look bold but wear easily. Each has a comfort-fit shank that flares at the back and sits in the crease of the finger, so it doesn’t spin. “They’re made for women who have a lot of board meetings all day long,” she says. “You shake someone’s hand, you’re never going to feel them.” Everything is made by two jewelers, one in New York and one in Miami.
For most of her career, Silverglide hunted for the right stone for the right client. With her Ignite collection, she has another focus in mind.
“It’s a very different mindset,” she says, “because I’m doing it for me.”
Top: A group of GemologyGeek Ignite rings shown under UV light (photos courtesy of GemologyGeek)
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