We’re super excited about September’s birth stone...
Why?
Because the scintillating stone for September happens to be one of our favourites… Sapphires! We absolutely love the versatility and range these stunning stones offer.
This September we’re hoping to shed a little more light on the variety and potential a September Sapphire birthstone jewellery piece could offer you.
All sapphires are graded according to these three elements:
- Hue: This refers to the colour of the stone
- Saturation: This refers to the intensity of colour
- Tone: This refers to the shade of colour in the stone
You might think of sapphires as a rich blue stone and given that the stone was named in Greek for its azure qualities, you wouldn’t be wrong but sapphires actually occur in a variety of colours which offer an opportunity to create something particularly special for a September birth stone piece.
Blue Sapphires
Perhaps the most famous sapphire in recent times is the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton’s stunning sapphire and diamond engagement ring. The exquisite clarity of the gem and the eye-catching setting has thrown sapphires back into the spotlight in recent times, and we’ve had a steady increase in sapphire engagement ring requests since the big announcement.
Blue sapphires come in a wide range of blues from the classic “sapphire blue” to rich velvety tones and very pale sky-blue shades. Depending on your taste and the person wearing the piece, you could choose anything from a darker blue sapphire which emit a velvety quality and when set to perfection create an enigmatic piece that will outlast fashion trends and become a part of your legacy collection, to a sweet and dainty pale blue stone set in a bracelet or pendant.
Coloured Sapphires
If blue stones aren’t to your taste, sapphires offer a beautiful range of colours from pink to yellow, orange, green and violet shades. Known as fancy or party sapphires, coloured sapphires offer delightful colour variety that off set beautifully with diamonds and yellow or white gold.
Recent modern settings include floral designs using fancy sapphires as the centre piece and modern square cut sapphires in a two-tone effect. We particularly like the fancy sapphires set as a pendant and drop earrings set as the pop of unusual colour offers delightful design flexibility.
Star Sapphires
Star sapphires exhibit an unusual characteristic called an asterism in which intersecting needle like inclusions -often rutile- follow the underlying crystal structure resulting in a six rayed or sometimes twelve-rayed star in the stone.
Some famous star sapphires include the Star Of Adam, a 1404.49 carat blue star sapphire worth roughly €250 million and the Black Star of Queensland, a 733 carat black sapphire.
Star sapphires set to make the most of natural light make for an exceptionally rate sapphire piece.
Colour Changing Sapphires
A few natural sapphires have the unusual quality of changing colour depending on whether they are in outdoor (natural) or indoor (incandescent) light. The noticeable difference in colour offers a delightful duplicity to jewellery created with these unusual gems.
Conclusion
We particularly like engagement rings with a tear or round cut sapphire, set with diamonds in a solitaire setting to ensure this rare sapphire is given as much light as possible.
The surprising diversity sapphires offer make Septembers birthstone a useful and exciting gem to include in any collection. Whatever your choice of sapphire colour we will help you choose the right metal to offset its brilliant qualities and create a timeless September birthday month piece for your collection.
