Today it is the fashion of our land to refer to the pinks as something other than reds. Ruby or pink sapphire? A lesson from the past The sense of sight is indeed the highest bodily privilege, the purest physical pleasure, which man has derived from his creator. Too often, we feel for the dots on the lab cert, rather than looking with our own eyes to see if it is beautiful. lesser branches of the corundum family tree, we behave as though we are all graduates of the Braille Academy of the Visual Arts. Unfortunately, when it comes to questions like ruby vs. This clearly illustrates the problems created by overly narrow variety definitions. Stone 2 walks the line, a ruby to some, while a mere pink sapphire to others.

Most gem dealers would classify stones 3 and 4 as rubies, while stone 1 would be a pink sapphire. The question is whether or not a variety name should encompass hue position alone, or segregate gems of the same hue into different groups based on often poorly understood tone and saturation ranges – factors that often have a direct bearing on quality.įour corundums of the same hue (red), but showing a variation in saturation and tone.

The crux of what I’m about to discuss is a desire – most human I admit – for a simple word to separate something that has stymied the best minds of my generation.

Do I really want to continue reading? Straight out of the gate this man is three sheets into a gale-force Beat ramble.īut follow me here, people. If the gem isn’t buff enough to make the centerfold of Gem & Gemology, it is sniffed at as a “lesser being” unworthy of the name.Īnd when it comes to the crimson corundums, despite a decade’s worth of McCarthyism we Yanks still cannot sort out the difference between a pinko and a true red.īy this point, I know what you’re thinking. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked… Allen Ginsberg, HowlĮver notice how gemologists and dealers toss the term padparadscha around like some kinda überrock. An examination of the problem of separating pink sapphire and padparadscha from ruby.

Padparadscha ruby