The Beauty of Colored Gems

Color is the most beautiful manifestation of light and one of the most striking features of the material world. It spices Nature as salt does food. After the gray monotone of winter, man's eyes rejoice in the fresh, sparkling abundance of spring color.

Color expresses dynamism and energy discount diamond earrings; unasked, it brings us cheerful serenity and uplifted spirits. So, too, the love of precious stones depends to a great extent on their richness of color. Unearthed from the dark underworld into the light, the essentially modest crystals owe their sublime dignity and glorious beauty to color alone. The world of human conceptions is mainly a world of the eye and thus a world of light and color. Its liveliness and its constantly changing play of light not only satisfy a general feeling for beauty; they are, rather, a functional need of mankind.

Thus it is no chance that the striking colors of the three most precious stones—ruby, sapphire, and emerald—are generally felt to be the most pleasing and the most satisfying of all. This delightful impression on our eyes is certainly a very prosaic explanation of our longing for beauty. But perhaps the yearning desire for color may be less factually explained? Could not their power of attraction be based on this: that when we look at a glorious deep-colored stone we simply forget our conscious selves?—that we sink completely into dimly discerned depths?—that doors open to us which otherwise remain closed?—that pictures full of peace and bliss shape themselves before our inner eyes diamond hoop earrings?

We see indescribable landscapes of deep surging blue in the sapphire, veiled and unfathomable; explosions of light, consuming fires in the red glow of the ruby; leaping mountain streams, foaming seas, or peaceful gardens in the green of the emerald. Far from the glittering thrones of these high majesties, fascination and delight may also be experienced in the more modest gemstones. Thus, in the ultramarine blue of lapis lazuli we may imagine a piece of the starry heavens, opal conjures up the illusion of a merry harlequin, spectrolite captures in our hands a shimmering rainbow. Would not man's fantasy become impoverished without color? A liberating and yet restricting wonder about these mysterious connections starts to overwhelm us. In the next chapter, may our minds stay clear enough to grasp the bewildering mutual relationships in this outcome of breathtaking elective affinities in the origin of color.