musicloveranthony
Brilliant_Rock
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2014
- Messages
- 1,558
Alas, this beautiful piece was left in my hotel room in Miami Beach and was never recovered I wanted to share about it, though, as it was a truly special gemstone.
This was a natural, unheated zircon from Nigeria. It was very well cut and was truly special. It had incredible dispersion unlike any zircon I've seen before or since - a couple jewelers even thought it was a pale sphene due to the intense dispersion. More incredibly, though, it displayed a vivid and intense tenebrescence. Tenebrescence is a phenomenon by which a gemstone will change in tone when exposed to sunlight and when allowed to "rest" in absence of sunlight. It's the same phenomenon artificially used for transition lenses in glasses. Ultraviolet light from the sun would cause this particular zircon to shift colors very dramatically in a way I've not seen before (Zircon is my favorite CS). It was incredible how fast the stone would shift. You could watch it happening before your eyes in a matter of seconds. When away from the sun for a few hours, or when exposed to warm temperature and absence of UV light the stone would shift to its resting color which was a very pale brownish color (more of an off-white).
I'm going to attach a photo I took on its final vacation to Miami Beach. The lightest color was the stone "at rest" at my house in Minnesota. The medium tone was when exposed to the Miami sun for about 30 seconds. The darkest tone was when I put it under a UV "sun lamp" for about 30 seconds.
I truly miss this stone and I think about almost every day - even though I've been without it for 2+ years.
This was a natural, unheated zircon from Nigeria. It was very well cut and was truly special. It had incredible dispersion unlike any zircon I've seen before or since - a couple jewelers even thought it was a pale sphene due to the intense dispersion. More incredibly, though, it displayed a vivid and intense tenebrescence. Tenebrescence is a phenomenon by which a gemstone will change in tone when exposed to sunlight and when allowed to "rest" in absence of sunlight. It's the same phenomenon artificially used for transition lenses in glasses. Ultraviolet light from the sun would cause this particular zircon to shift colors very dramatically in a way I've not seen before (Zircon is my favorite CS). It was incredible how fast the stone would shift. You could watch it happening before your eyes in a matter of seconds. When away from the sun for a few hours, or when exposed to warm temperature and absence of UV light the stone would shift to its resting color which was a very pale brownish color (more of an off-white).
I'm going to attach a photo I took on its final vacation to Miami Beach. The lightest color was the stone "at rest" at my house in Minnesota. The medium tone was when exposed to the Miami sun for about 30 seconds. The darkest tone was when I put it under a UV "sun lamp" for about 30 seconds.
I truly miss this stone and I think about almost every day - even though I've been without it for 2+ years.