In almost five decades in the gem world, I thought I had seen it all!!

But, as usual, reality proved me wrong!

A kilo and a half of fairly hideous color sapphire rough, had been lying in our safe for more than two decades.

It represented years of leftovers of unwanted and rejected colors of rough sapphires from the Umba River in Tanzania,

All the good blues, reds, pinks, greens and yellows had been faceted and sold long ago.

This rough was not cut! Who would think of buying such unattractive colors?

But, during the past decade, the world’s attitude towards colors has changed…

Can you believe that when a gem is not pure blue, red, green or yellow, the uglier the color combination, the better it is perceived?

So, I set out to preshape this rough, and the more I preshaped, the more excited I became.

In front of my very eyes a storm of gem colors was being created… from gray-green-blue to lagoon color to vivid pink-brown and gray-purple-blue and amazing brown-gray-green to name just a few.

I became more and more curious to know what the reaction of our customers would be!

When the gems came back from faceting in our Bangkok lapidary, we found that many of them displayed a distinct color change effect.

I took the gems to show to our next-door jeweler and his wife, who are known to be very meticulous in their choice of gem color.

Looking at the gems, while I shined them with my warm color flashlight to show the color change, he shouted “Wow! What a beautiful tornado of unheated sapphires!”

From that rejected sapphire rough from the Umba River in Tanzania, I know that we have created something very special….