This lovely orange tourmaline has inclusions in it that provide a show of multi-coloured sparkles, as if all the stars were contained within! (Check out the videos on this page) It was the only one out of my supplier’s batch that had this effect, so I knew I must buy it and wrap it into a gorgeous ring. The stone is framed in hand-wrought copper into a size US 6 (UK/AUS L, 16.31mm) ring. The untreated copper will naturally tarnish over time and a shine can be brought back to the highlights using a jewellery cloth.
Tourmaline is a boron silicate mineral with a Mohs hardness of 7-7.5 (pretty hard). The variety of chemical compositions leads to a variety of colours. It is formed when the elements in the right compositions create crystals with the help of warm water and vapours into pockets and voids. Tourmaline is the modern birthstone for October.
