Posted on: February 6th, 2010 Watermelon Tourmaline

Do you like watermelon? How about a semi-precious gemstone called watermelon tourmaline?

Tourmaline is a crystal silicate mineral and is one of the most desirable gemstones in the market.You can find most of the tourmaline colours in large sizes. Some tourmalines are zoned in a combination of colours so you can see more than one colour in some stones like watermelon tourmaline. In the trade, people call this stone watermelon tourmaline because of its colour combination, outside the stone is green and in the middle is reddish pink like a watermelon.

Talented gem-cutters often take advantage of tourmaline’s amazing color zoning to create a unique gemstone.

Tourmaline’s colours have many different causes; for example during tourmaline’s crystal growing,  colour zoning occurs. Manganese causes red and pink and traces of Iron and Titanium make the stone green and blue .

Fine Tourmalines are sourced in Brazil. You can also find them in other countries like Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and USA.

As you may know gemstones are different in hardness and toughness that means some may break or scratch more easily than others.

It is very important for a designer to know how hard or soft each stone is. For instance a soft gemstone is not a good option for a Cocktail ring because it will chip after wearing a few times. You may better use soft stones for pendants or earrings.

As a Gemologist , I use Moh’s hardness scale to see how hard or soft the gemstone is. In this scale, number 1 is the softest and number 10 is the hardest degree. For example diamond‘s hardness is 10 in Moh’s scale and coral is 3-4. Tourmaline’s hardness is 7 – 7.5

I took some photos of a few Tourmalines and attached them here, hope you enjoy them.

Faraz Dalaee
GIA Gemologist at Toranj London

Photos by: Faraz Dalaee

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