Fashion

[stevieb]

@lmt  Aquamarine is among my very favorite gemstones... I just love it... I'd guess that since the gemstones in this case were from Brazil that they're probably Santa Maria aquamarines, which are among the very best and tend to be highly saturated in color, which can often be an issue with aquamarine...

[stevieb]

For those who, like me, find the aquamarine tiara enchanting, the queen has an entire parure composed of aquamarine and I thought you might enjoy seeing the other pieces... And actually, my initial post was somewhat in error, Brazil had gifted the queen with a beautiful aquamarine necklace, earrings and bracelet. She had the tiara created to complete the set.

[Trinity11]

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@stevieb wrote:

@Trinity11  And speaking of the whole precious versus semi-precious condundrum, a few years back I had the pleasure of attending a jewelry 'trunk show' at one of the most 'tony' jewelers in my area. Nothing was within my reach, but it was fascinating that the show offered mostly emeralds and pariaba tourmalines... First, as a long time emerald lover I was sort of floored by how they 'suffered' in comparison to the tourmlines and was also astounded that of the 'best of the best' the tourmalines were commanding significantly higher prices... Of course 'value' often changes with the marketplace, supply and demand, so on and so forth...

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When I worked in a managerial capacity at Tiffany’s, back even in the 80’s and 90’s, we were taught to drop the nomenclature “semi-precious.” If I remember correctly it was around the time that they introduced tanzanites in 1968, I was told there was talk of dropping the term semi-precious  @stevieb .