海藍寶石

Aquamarine — beryl in its coolest color

Aquamarine is the sky-blue to sea-green variety of beryl, colored by Fe²⁺ sitting in the channels of the beryl structure. It crystallizes as clean hexagonal prisms — often gemmy, often perfectly terminated — which makes it one of the most displayable of all gem-variety minerals.

The three sources we stock

• Erongo Mountains, Namibia — columnar crystals with strong color, famous for pairing with jet-black schorl tourmaline in the same pocket; an aquamarine-on-schorl combination is the signature Erongo piece.
• Xuebaoding, Sichuan, China — China's noted aquamarine locality, where pale ice-blue prisms grow with silvery muscovite books in the same Sn-W system that produces the mountain's famous scheelite.
• Pakistan — sharp hexagonal crystals from the Karakoram pegmatite belt, the entry point for gem-crystal collecting.

What to look for

Color saturation and clarity pull in opposite directions — deep-blue crystals are rarely glassy-clear, and water-clear prisms are usually pale. Decide which you collect for. Matrix and combination pieces (with muscovite or schorl) carry more character than loose single crystals at the same price.

Related

Aquamarine is a variety of beryl; see also the Xuebaoding locality page and the tourmaline guide.