Aquamarine – March’s birthstone

This is the birthstone for March and a beautiful pale blue, from a soft milky colour through to a clear icy blue or almost ice blue/white.   It is also a gift to be given for those celebrating a 19th wedding anniversary.  Who says people have to miss out between their 15th and 20th anniversaries?

The colour means that it works really well with silver based jewellery and those who wear clothes based on the House of Colour or Colour Me Beautiful will find that, if they are winter or summer or cool coloured clothing people this stone will really suit them too.

Aquamarine is part of the Beryl family, so its siblings are emerald, morganite (named after JP Morgan) and goshenite.  As you can tell, it is named becuase it reminds us of seawater and is beautiful.  The milky blues were also 1 of Patone’s colours of last year, which demonstrates just how valued it is.

It is marked as 7.5-8 on the Mohs scale, which means it is as hard as amethyst and so is good for a range of jewellery.  Its colour is natural and is not usually enhanced by heat treatment and it can be cleaned (if needed) by simple soapy water.

The beryl family are made with tubes within, which is important to know with emeralds (see a blog coming in May), but for aquamarine, sometimes it can, if all the tubes are parrallel to each other, create an effect known as a cat’s eye or chatoyancy (chat – cat in French).  I have to admit, I have only seen this effect in pictures on aquamarine, although it is a wonderful feature of tiger’s eye.

Folklore claims that aquamarine can help with healing and was thought in the middle ages to be a stone to help against poisons.  However, I make no claims, only that is beautiful and I love to set it with other soft colours, such as amazonite, which quartz and most definitely with pearls, for a stunning  “something blue” piece of wedding jewellery.

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