Blue Topaz
The birthstone for the month of November, and the official stone for the ‘Lone Star’ state of Texas, Topaz is the most popular and widely used gemstone today. It is a naturally occurring stone that comes in a variety of different shades, including blue, amber, red, pink, orange, beige, brown and clear. Though not its most common naturally occurring color, blue topaz is its most popular shade. A recently discovered irradiation process that allows one to color clear topaz different shades of blue has allowed for the widespread use and popularity of blue topaz. Blue topaz is the birthstone for December.There has been a recent trend in jewelry to apply certain impurities, such as titanium oxide, to the stone’s surface, giving it an almost emerald green color. Though blue topaz and these newer green hues of the stone are the most popular, it is the red and orange shades of topaz that are the most rare and most valuable. It’s most common natural color is yellow, and for a long time during the Middle Ages topaz was simply the name for any yellowish gem.
In Ancient Egypt, topaz was thought to contain the glow and power of ‘Ra’ the god of the sun, and any jewelry made with the stone was thought to convey divine protection on its wearer. The Romans had a similar belief, associating the stone with their own sun god ‘Jupiter’. Before them, ancient Greeks believed that the stone could imbue its owner with great strength, and make him invisible in times of danger. Many people today still believe that the stone holds mystical powers, such as the power to heal asthma, cure poisons, correct for poor vision and ease insomnia. Topaz has had more powers associated with it throughout history than any other gemstone.
The name topaz is derived from the Greek work ‘topazos’, which means ‘to seek’. Topazos was an island in the Red Sea that was very hard to find and contained a valuable source of minerals mined in ancient times. The yellowish stones mined from Topazos are now believed to be a different mineral than topaz.
The gem itself is a transparent silicate of the elements aluminum and fluorine. Today, it is usually associated with granite and rhyolite rocks in the mountains of Brazil, Ural, Germany, Scandinavia, Japan, Mexico, and the United States. Though it can be synthesized in a lab, no economically feasible method exists to do so, so virtually all existing topaz is from a natural source.