Emerald Jewellery

Why Colombian emeralds

Colombia has produced the world's finest emeralds for five centuries. Zambian material runs cooler and darker, Brazilian tends lighter, and both can be beautiful — but Colombian is what the market prices highest, and it is what our family knows.

What separates a fine Colombian stone from a merely green one is saturation, the character of the inclusions, and how much oil it has taken.

On oil and treatment

Almost every emerald on the market has been oiled. It is an accepted practice going back centuries, filling surface-reaching fissures and improving apparent clarity. It is not a defect, and an oiled emerald is a perfectly good emerald.

What matters is that the treatment is disclosed rather than glossed over. Every emerald we sell is certified by our gemmologist, and we will assess the degree of oil on request for anyone who wants that detail before buying.

We do not sell lab-created emeralds.

Judging an emerald

Colour does most of the work. A vivid medium-toned green will outprice a larger, paler stone almost every time. Tone matters as much as hue — too dark reads black in poor light, too light reads washed out.

Clarity works differently than with diamonds. Emeralds are expected to have inclusions, called the jardin for their resemblance to foliage, and an eye-clean emerald of good colour is genuinely rare. Inclusions that do not disturb the colour or threaten the stone's structure are character rather than fault, and they are one of the ways a gemmologist tells a natural stone from a synthetic.

Emerald cut exists for a practical reason: those clipped corners remove the most fragile part of the stone. Oval, pear and cushion cuts also work well where the rough allows.

Carat weight matters less than people assume. A 1.5 carat emerald of fine colour beats a 3 carat stone of ordinary colour on both price and appearance.

Wearing emerald

Emerald sits at 7.5 to 8 on the Mohs scale. Hard enough, but the natural fractures running through most emeralds make it more brittle than the number suggests. That matters most in rings, less in earrings and pendants.

Clean with warm soapy water and a soft brush. Never use an ultrasonic cleaner — it can drive out the oil and expose the fissures underneath. Bring a piece back to us every few years and we will check the setting and re-oil if needed.

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Custom design

Most of our emerald work begins with a client choosing a loose stone. We then design the piece around it — consultation, sketches, 3D rendering, then fabrication. Four to eight weeks from design approval.