Blue Spinel Ring

[ilovegemstones]

What colour would you call this blue? I see blue with some grey and a touch of violet. It is a blue spinel cut by Rick Martin of Art Cut Gems and I acquired it through a trade for a star sapphire ring with another PSer. It is a nice, big, sparkly stone that I have been overlooking but I am happy whenever I take it out. It looks best outdoors but still holds its blue in indoor lighting. I am guessing it is from Tanzania? There are some dust specks on it but it actually is a crystal clear stone.

 

[chrono]

There's also some green in the second picture.

 

[ilovegemstones]

I think that is a reflection because we were surrounded by plants.

 

[chrono]

I used the stone to its left as reference to gauge the colour. When shopping for African blue spinels, I have come across several that seemed to show some green under certain lighting. It was not easy to pick up unless I had one that stayed blue to compare with side by side.

 

[ilovegemstones]

It could be slight, you are right. It is just funny that I see some violet in it inside. How can it then show a bit of green outside? Maybe though I would have to see a lot more stones like this to know!

 

[Seaglow]

I think the industry is starting to call the blue gray/gray blue spinels as titanium blue/titanium color. It was mention to me by a dealer.

 

[ilovegemstones]

Thanks for the info! That is a fitting name.

 

[chrono]

As long as they don't increase prices to go along with the romanticized name.

 

[chatoyancy]

Spinels are so shifty in different lighting. I love that about them though. I see gray, green and violet in your different pics. It's so spinel! It's beautiful!!

 

[T L]

It's grey-blue, but I like that it has a nice medium tone. Many grey spinels are way too dark IMO.

 

[Seaglow]

As long as they don't increase prices to go along with the romanticized name.

I think that's what the name is for! Lol. It has drastically increased in price already. These grays used to be almost given away at source countries. But admittedly, very few gemstones produce lovely shades of gray.

Same as what happened to grape garnets though. It was an unexpected hit, many dealers thought who would buy garnets that look like amethysts so they were like 5 dollars a gram for rough. Then it was cued as grape garnets and now at hundreds of dollars.