Tourmaline is not one of the birth or amulet stones worn for one effect or other since early times giving birth to various myths and popular beliefs, nor a medieval king’s love or a tribe’s identity stone giving it royal or ethnic contexts; it has sought its place in the school of gemstones and all its market potentials by its merit as a stone : its delicate-looking hardness, its rich colours, its ability to reveal a diamond-like fine face to gem-setter’s tool, its friendly interaction with light and the ease it allows in being handled. Unlike most stones in which colour-variations are due to some kind of internal impurities, tourmaline has its wide colour-range due to its highly complicated and exceptionally varied chemical composition; thus, while in other stones colour-variations are a defect, in tourmaline it is its exceptional virtue.
As is the nature’s law, rarity has greater value than has the bulk or mass. The opaque black, the most common colour of tourmaline, is found in bulk and has little value. Contrarily, the transparent colourless variety is the rarest and carries the highest value. Its coloured varieties are blue, red, pink, green, brown and yellow, and sometimes pink and green in one piece – all fire-like liquid-looking. Light does not pass through them as it does in its transparent colourless variety, it however penetrates some of its layers affording it a pleasant translucence. As regards colours, the best in green is the emerald green, and in red, ruby red. Blue, light or dark, with reflection of blue sapphire, is a rarer variety and is costlier than other colours. Though much of the feature depends on how it is cut : in most cases it being ‘mixed cut’, a tourmaline bead shows different colours when viewed from different angles.
The basic structure of this necklace consists of a chain of inter-connected tiny circular loops of sterling silver and a sliding lock terminal. Besides holding two loops on its right and left every ring has attached to it a loop-holder supporting on it one tourmaline bead. Though faceted largely in mixed style, for pinning the bead with the loop-chain the gem-cutter has styled it into briolette shape that provides for one conically extended end which being extra, even when occupied by a loop-holder, does not affect the bead’s shape, symmetry and beauty. The necklace does not have any black opaque bead : usually a component of mourning jewellery. It however comprises a few colourless transparent pieces – the most invaluable of tourmaline stones. Other colours are semi-transparent. Green in different shades, deep green in particular, a few blue and red, and all others comprise the range of colours that define the beads this necklace is composed of.
This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of ancient Indian literature. Dr Daljeet is the chief curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the National Museum of India, New Delhi. They have both collaborated on numerous books on Indian art and culture.
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