Buying an Emerald When
buying emeralds, you should be aware that nearly all emeralds have been treated to improve their appearance.
Treatments used to improve outward appearance and clarity can take the form of: Fracture
Filling - Routinely done, this fills surface reaching fractures with colorless oils or resins. To improve both color
and clarity. Dyeing - This involves adding color to oils or resins used
in fracture filling to improve or deepen the color of the stone. Though this is rarely done. Coating - Whilst rarely done, a light colored beryl could be covered with green plastic. However, the inclusions found in emeralds can also serve as an easy way for an experienced gemologist
to distinguish a genuine stone from a synthetic one.  The Emerald Cut as shown in the picture below, was designed for emeralds, to help protect the stone from breaking or cracking
easily by having rounded corners.
Durability and Care Being a 7-8 on the Mohs scale,
they are not as tough as sapphires and rubies and can crack quite easily, so care should be taken when wearing them as
a ring or bracelet especially. Flawless stones, especially those larger than a
few carats are extremely rare. The large majority of emeralds are prone to internal flaws, cracks and inclusions,
so stones are often oiled and filled in order to improve their outward appearance and color, therefore making them more appealing
to the eye and more marketable. Inclusions can be useful though in helping to determine if a stone is natural or synthetic,
since the synthetic emeralds are of the same structure and chemistry as its natural counterpart.
 Did you know...
Emeralds are perhaps the most well
known of the beryl family and supposedly have the power to make the wearer quick witted and intelligent, but I will leave
that up to you to decide!! Emeralds have been mined as far back as
330 B.C. in Egypt, and they were still mining there in the 17 Century. Cleopatra had a passion for emeralds and they
were used in her royal addornments. The ancient Egyptians also considered these stones to be a symbol of fertility and
new life. Nowadays, emerald is the birthstone for May, coming from earlier beliefs that the stone represents new growth
it was also believed to have helped cure diseases such as cholera and malaria. The
picture above right is of an uncut emerald. The most well known area for mining of emeralds is Columbia, though nowadays stones also come
from Brazil, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Zambia. The
National Gem Collection at the Smithsonian has a number of beautiful examples of emeralds, the largest of which is the whopping
168 carat Mackay Emerald. It is set in an art deco necklace of diamond and platinum which was designed by Cartier. References
Gemstones/Cally
Hall, Dorling Kindersley Limited 1994
The
National Gem Collection/Jeffery E Post, 1997 Smithsonian Institution
[Uncut Emerald courtesy of http://scienceviews.com/photo/rocks/Emerald1.html]
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