Admired for its warmth and inner glow, moonstone has caught the eye of a new generation of jewelry designers. What gives this feldspar gem its radiance and adaptability is the occurrence of schiller — a layered inclusion of different feldspar producing the phenomenon adularescence, the visual effect of reflected light. The resulting sheen mimics the moon’s glow, inspiring the gem’s name. The bigger the stone, the more you can see its natural schiller.
Composed of sodium potassium aluminum silicate, moonstones take on many colors, from shades of gray and peach to brown and green, with the most popular varieties blue and rainbow. “Its base colors appear different depending on its light source, and they can sometimes create a rainbow effect,” says Cathy Cronin of Boston Gems, a Massachusetts-based gem wholesaler with expertise in moonstone. Also appealing, she says, is that moonstone is a natural, unenhanced gem. Recognized as a June birthstone, moonstone has historically been deemed a lucky gem.
Designers’ Delight
Moonstone is one of those gems that provide designers with the opportunity to experiment with unique shapes and a larger scale in stones, one of the many benefits fueling its popularity. Its visual dimension also adds texture to designs, and the price points are reasonable without sacrificing style.
“I’ve always loved moonstone,” says Ray Griffiths, an Australian-born, New York City–based designer. “It has a discreet sensibility. It’s a beautiful stone with lots of character. It’s also very magical, almost mystical — and with none of that bling going on.” Griffiths says he has used many of the various moonstone colors over the years with different metals to great effect, noting that the silver and rainbow moonstones pair beautifully with white gold and platinum, and the green moonstone with yellow gold.
Custom jeweler Eve Alfillé of Evanston, Illinois, says she has great success using rainbow moonstone from India, which until recently she says was referred to as labradorite — a darker body-colored feldspar gem — and its European cousin, from Finland, spectrolite, which exhibits intense iridescent flashes of color, known as “labradorescence.” Deposits of moonstone also occur in Australia, the Austrian Alps, Mexico, Myanmar, Norway, Poland and the United States.
“I’ve always liked moonstone as beads, particularly since it’s possible, with patience, to find better-quality beads with fine schiller,” shares Alfillé. “I often sort through strands, separating the beads according to schiller into dark blue, blue-green and yellow-green; then I use them in separate pieces to get more refined results.” She looks for stones with well-centered schiller to create her rings.
Alfillé, who has collected this gemstone for years, raves about moonstone carvings produced by lapidary artists in Idar-Oberstein, Germany, which “look literally alive,” as well as solid blocks, drilled as beads, which have “sheen in every direction.”
Celebrity go-to designers Lorraine Schwartz, based in New York, and Erica Courtney, in Los Angeles, have used moonstones in many of their red-carpet creations. Stylists are keen on moonstone, says Courtney, because it works well with different colors, allowing fickle stars to change their mind about what they’re wearing up until the last minute without worrying if their accessories match. “Moonstone has an ethereal feeling; it’s mystical, glamourous and goes with everything,” Courtney says, adding that because the gem is typically cabochon cut, it’s easy to wear.
Its chameleonlike properties make moonstone a complement to an array of gems from beryl and tourmaline to Tahitian pearls. Moonstone easily transforms from a fresh day gem to a glamourous night stone, notes Manu Nichani of Blue Moon Enterprises, Carlsbad, California.
Sourcing the Stone
Although feldspar is one of the most plentiful minerals on earth, moonstone is hard to find in fine quality, even when working with the best stone dealers, Courtney points out, citing special difficulty in finding fine material in large sizes.
“Challenges in most gemstone supply come from politics, strife within the given cultures that control the supply. In the case of moonstone, the most abundant supply I’ve found comes from India, Sri Lanka and Burma,” relates Albuquerque, New Mexico, jewelry artisan Paula Crevoshay. “Terrorism has affected supplies over the years in Sri Lanka and Burma also has political constraints that block supply. The tsunami challenged so much of Asia, and the cities of Colombo and Galle, gem centers in Sri Lanka, were really set back during that crisis.”
Fine blue and rainbow moonstones, designer favorites, can go for $150 to $250 a carat, says Nichani, who cites limited availability for finer goods in sought-after sizes from 10 carats to 20 carats. “The more shimmer the stone has, the harder it is to find and the more valuable it is,” he adds.
In fact, Crevoshay has been searching for the past two years to source a top 30-carat-plus gem. A collector of fine blue moonstones from Sri Lanka for more than 30 years, she says her best stones are long gone and it has been impossible to get her deepest sources to part with old stock.
The real draw for moonstone is its understated elegance. “Bling is too over the top and in your face during these tough economic times,” says Crevoshay, who is drawn to moonstone’s glow from an optical standpoint as a designer and a spiritual standpoint as a human being. “We need that spiritual light as we struggle for common ground economically and geopolitically.”
Article from the Rapaport Magazine - October 2010. To subscribe click here.