Ever since stones from a splendid new Brazilian find started making their way to market in early 1987, much conventional wisdom about alexandrite has had to be chucked.
Take, for instance, the common trade assumption that South America is good for nothing but the most inferior variety of this color-change chrysoberyl. Rather than turning green in sunlight and red in incandescent light as model alexandrite is supposed to do, Brazil’s stones are accused of almost always stopping far short of green at olive and far short of red at brown. “Don’t mention Brazil and alexandrite to me in the same breath,” sniffed one San Francisco antique and estate jewelry dealer who had not heard about the new find when we called to ask him about it.
Ironically, his description of the ideal alexandrite color change—rich blue green to strong violet red—fit what we have observed in the best of Brazil’s new breed. Yet this expert maintained that such colors were found only in Russian stones from Siberia and the Ural Mountains mined almost exclusively in the 19th century. So did the owner of a major antiquities gallery on New York’s Fifth Avenue who was also unaware of the find. His reaction to the news of Brazil’s latest alexandrite: “We would welcome more stones with the Siberian colors.”
That’s what dealers swept off their feet by the new find are counting on: favorable comparison of their new alexandrites with the grandest stones produced by Russia.
The Tiffany Connection
To those familiar with Russian stones besides alexandrite, Russia is synonymous with the ultimate in species excellence. It is common in the trade to hear amethyst described as possessing Siberian color. And dealers familiar with both the demantoid and tsavorite varieties of green garnet will tell you Russia’s demantoids are far superior to East Africa’s tsavorites.
But of all Russian gems, it is alexandrite which is the most coveted. The trouble is that mining of this gem in Russia lasted less than 100 years and probably peaked late in the 19th century. From the very beginning, Russian alexandrite led a charmed life. Discovered in 1830 on Czar Alexander II’s birthday, the stone was named after him because its green and red colors were those of the motherland.
Although the gem quickly found favor in the jewelry salons of St. Petersburg and Paris, it was Tiffany that seems to have done the most to popularize it in the world at large (as it also did for demantoid). Gemologist George Kunz, the firm’s audacious gem buyer, fell so in love with alexandrite that he travelled to Russia in search of it.
No one knows just how much of this then-rare gem Kunz bought in Russia but it seems likely that as a result of his efforts Tiffany had reserves so considerable that it may have cornered the market for decades. Russian gems and jewelry expert Peter Schaffer of world-famous A La Vieille Russie, New York, says that more than 50% of the Russian alexandrite pieces that his firm has sold were made by Tiffany. Nearly all of them center-stone rings, most dating from the 19th century but some from after, one even as late as the 1950s. Interestingly, many of the other pieces with Russian alexandrite Schaffer has sold were made in England during the Victorian era and feature groupings of small stones. “Tiffany preferred larger sizes,” he says.
Big Isn’t Beautiful
What Schaffer means by “larger” is not exactly what the word means when applied to, say, sapphire or amethyst. Although he has seen Russian alexandrites of 30 and 40 carats, Schaffer says they almost never impressed him. “In top alexandrite, the stone turns from deep green to deep red as if you were watching a traffic light change colors,” he says. “Past around 8 carats, you rarely see Siberian stones that have the right colors or that change completely enough.”
Those who desired alexandrite in truly large sizes with good color change have long relied on Sri Lanka. For some dealers, these stones are actually superior to the Russian variety. New York lapidary Regent to Milstein, Reginald C. Miller Inc., says he prefers Sri Lankan to Russian alexandrite because its green veers toward yellow rather than blue and its red is more bronze than purple.
Miller belongs to a decided minority, especially since Brazilian stones highly evocative of the Russian type have come into the marketplace. Indeed, the similarity between some American and Russian alexandrite is now so great some dealers fear attempts to pass off Brazil’s best as bona fide Siberian.
While acknowledging the strong color resemblances between Brazilian and Russian alexandrites, specialists in late-19th century antique jewelry where Siberian stones are most often found nowadays say Russian stones have slightly deeper tones and more saturate colors. One Tiffany jewelry expert who has seen scores of Siberian alexandrites and is fond of the new Brazilian stones describes the latter as “more watery”. By this somewhat subtle distinction, he means they seem clearer, more transparent. But the point is this: No matter how refined the differences between brazilian and russian stones are, they can be told apart. finds ex-women who now say that dealers sometimes tend to confuse the better Brazil stones with Russian.
With their greens and reds so reminiscent of Russian stones, it is hardly surprising to find prices for 2- to 3-carat Brazilian stones already reaching levels among dealers that are on a par with far larger and rarer stones from Sri Lanka. As of March 1988, prices for exemplary 3-carat stones were being quoted to us at $7,000 to $9,000 per carat. That’s awfully steep, especially when considering how seldom one hears these days of superb Siberian alexandrites fetching more than $12,000 per carat at wholesale—although around 1980 prices hit $15,000, even more, per carat. Will relatively abundant Brazilian alexandrites be able to justify prices nearing $10,000 per carat when important dealers in Russian stones resist prices for far rarer Siberian stones over $10,000 per carat?
Perhaps not in America. But one shouldn’t forget that the primary users of alexandrite for some time now have been the Japanese—the world’s most dogged devotees of phenomenon stones such as cat’s-eye, opal, of course, alexandrite. Especially for stones between 2 and 4 carats, the Japanese have so far swallowed the high prices being asked for fine alexandrite under 4 carats—whether Siberian origin or simply Siberian color. As long as they remain hooked on alexandrite, and as long as the dollar stays weak against the yen, U.S. dealers will have no choice but to pay more if they want a piece of the action in this coveted chrysoberyl.
Please note: this profile was originally published in 1988 in Modern Jeweler’s ‘Gem Profiles: The First 60’, written by David Federman with photographs by Tino Hammid.
The 1.29-carat Russian alexandrite shown in this post is from the collection of Mary Murphy Hamid, Los Angeles.
