In praise of transparency

HIGHER PURCHASE/ Tourmalines are this season's trendy choice for traditional jewellery

Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but when it comes to size, it's unlikely that either diamond or even ruby or emerald will hold a stone to the latest rage in India: tourmaline.

With jewellery becoming more incandescent, and coloured stones in demand, the clear "tura mali" of Sri Lanka is likely to be doing the rounds of most popular jewellery stores "" whether Bvlgari (where it's been a popular choice for years) or Amrapali, which uses traditional settings for contemporary designs with which to woo the West.

If tourmaline has been a little slow to debut in India, it's only because it isn't on par with the nine-planetary gems that have been in demand for various "prescribed" settings by astrologers who continue to have a strong influence on the choice of stones in one's jewellery.

Even otherwise, the range of colours available within the tourmaline range has made it difficult to pin down for most people, and therefore has largely escaped attention.

But now that jewellers are including semi-precious stones in settings with gold, white gold, platinum and palladium, it has became inevitable that the demand for tourmaline should perk up in the market.

There is no "typical" colour for tourmaline which can range from red to green, from yellow to blue, with several gradients and shades in between (and sometimes in the same stone as well).

Since tourmaline is a crystal of aluminium borosilicate, even little variations alter the colour dramatically. But what the stone lacks in consistency in terms of its tonal variations, it more than makes up in simplicity.

A hard (but not dense) stone, because of its transparency it lacks the brilliance of its precious cousins, and faceting does not make it glitter any more or less than plain polishing.

However, it's a reasonably uncomplicated stone to look after, requiring practically no care. And it can be cut into fairly large pieces for setting into jewellery which, in the case of a ruby or an emerald would cost practically the earth.

Buyers need only look for clear stones without a flaw, and should make purchases from the same batch if they need consistency of colour, as it becomes difficult to do a "match" with tourmalines from different mines, or even different rocks from the same mine.

But while reasonably good stones are easy enough to lay hands on from mines in Sri Lanka, Brazil, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, Pakistan, Afghanistan and even Maine and Utah in USA, very fine quality stones and colours are rare.

This makes the pricing of tourmalines difficult. Obviously, a tourmaline of very high quality is only a notch below a mid-level ruby stone, for example, but where the tourmaline scores is in the size of the stone.

Clear but not very fine quality tourmalines cost far less, though prices (despite increasing availability in India) are rising on account of an increase in their demand. On a very rough estimate, calculate the price of a decent tourmaline at one-seventh the price of an equivalent ruby.

A jeweller might try to confuse you by giving the stone different names, so it's wise to crack up on their usage. Reds, especially if they're dark, are also called rubellite.

An indigolith is a blue tourmaline, a drarite has shades of brown, schorl is black in colour, a verdilite is green (also sometimes referred to as Brazilian emerald), while if the colour of the stone changes with the quality of light, it's called (even sometimes if it is in different colours) pink tourmaline.

A boost to the stone in India has been the revival of copies of old collections of royal jewellery that used precious stones in enviable sizes.

Because tourmaline is easy enough to cut and set, it has helped revive the Edwardian England meets Raj India look that had been made popular by jewellers such as Cartier in the late-nineteenth century.

However, jewellers sometimes ensure colour consistency by placing coloured foils under the stone and sealing the back with gold. If you aren't buying the piece for the quality of the stone, this is fine.

But if you're investing in the quality of the stone, either check the pieces to be used before they're set in a case, or else insist on an open setting.

For, even though they may not be quite the cache of a diamond, investing in high quality tourmalines should easily return you your money with adequate interest.