One of the most attractive colors in gemstones is pink. Pink diamonds of superior quality and in dimensions of several carats hover around numbers that carry five zeros … to the carat! Pink sapphires, called padparadscha, are also highly sought after, although they never weigh more than two carats. Some pink tourmalines are considered among the pink stones of great beauty, but it is also...

NAME The name derives from the Latin "lapis", stone and "lazulum" blue or light blue, which in turn still derives from "lazhuward", the name by which the Persians designated the Afghan site and which is also the origin of the word "blue".”. While in ancient Greece and imperial Rome Lapis Lazuli was called “sapphirus” (blue), today this name refers to a variety of corundum:...

  The word “tourmaline” comes from the Sinhala thoramali or thuramali.  Sinhala, an Indo-Aryan language, is the official language of Sri Lanka (called Ceylon until 1972) and the exact meaning of these words remains difficult to discern. According to some, they refer to carnelian, “colored stones” or, quite simply, different stones from Sri Lanka. The...