Skip to content

news

Tourmaline: The Stone With Infinite Colors

by Julie MIALET 03 Mar 2022

Tourmaline comes from the Sinhalese “turamali”, which means “multi-coloured stones”.

Indeed, this stone has a very wide chromatic range and can even be the result of an assembly of two or three colors. Tourmaline rarely has one and the same color, the raw stone is often multicolored.

Tourmaline color range

There are also crystals of one color inside and another color outside. This is the case of watermelon tourmaline which combines the color pink inside and green on the periphery, like watermelon, hence its name.

Tourmalines: watermelon, rubellite, paraiba

The tourmalines most encountered in jewelry and jewelery are:

  • Rubellites (pink/red with often a hint of purple)
  • The verdelites (green-yellow to green-bottle through dark green or olive)
  • Paraiba tourmalines (very bright blue due to copper sulphate)
  • Indicolites (light blue to bluish-green)
  • Polychrome tourmalines

 

Where is tourmaline found?

Tourmaline is a stone found all over the world. From Africa to Asia via Russia, America and even Europe. But its main deposits are in Brazil and Sri Lanka.

It was in 1989 that the Paraiba tourmaline was discovered by Brazilian miners. Never had such a stone been seen before. Today this tourmaline is the rarest and most sought after and therefore the most expensive.

After the Second World War, German immigration was considerable in the State of Minas Gerais in Brazil, where very important mines were discovered. These immigrants forged close ties with Idar Oberstein. This small German town has become the main cutting center for the production of the Cruzeiro, Golconda, Virgem da Lapa and Itatiaia (Jonas) mines.

A few high jewelry pieces in tourmaline

Necklace chopard tourmaline paraiba diamonds 18 carat white gold

Chaumet tourmaline indicolite earrings wave collection

 

If you are interested in tourmaline, do not hesitate to discover what Les Pierres de Julie offers in store…

We are also available for any free expertise of your tourmaline jewelry, for this you can send an email with your photos to contact@lespierresdejulie.com.

Welcome to our shop in the Swiss village of 15th Parisian district!

Prev Post
Next Post

Thanks for subscribing!

This email has been registered!

Shop the look

Choose Options

Back In Stock Notification
Terms & Conditions
The present General Conditions of Use are up to date on November the 5th 2022

> Read the GCU
this is just a warning