SAPPHIRE TRAVELS NOW
Perhaps a sapphire hunting vacation is in order? We’ve got a few ideas for you.
First up, Thailand!
Photo: Nizam Uddin Chanthaburi, Thailand
Thailand is a jewel, in and of itself. Whether or not you’ve ever been, you can always discover new magic in your travels to Thailand. In our quest for beautiful sapphires, we find them here. And, as mentioned in our Sapphire Soul Daily Fix, the mining here in Thailand is conducted ethically.
Don’t just buy your jewels in Bangkok, as most tourists in Thailand do. Instead, get the full on experience. Visit the Chanthaburi Sapphire Mine, 250 km south of Bangkok, and take a tour.While the mines were tapped out in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the world brings its raw sapphires and rubies here to be cut.
You will enjoy Wat Kao Sukhim, where you can see its collection of gemstone artistry and craftsmanship. Most of the village residents are gemstone cutters, with skills passed down through generations within families. Watch them as they turn rough blue, green, and white sapphires into polished, faceted sparkles.
Photo: Divine Guidance 944. Raw Sapphire.
Over 80% of the world’s sapphires and rubies pass through this marketplace. The market, known in Thai as talad ploy, is where you can find the world’s best deals. It is open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, from about 11 in the morning to about 6 in the evening. Anyone can come here to buy and sell.
Find a place to sit. Post a sign that announces what you are interested in buying. For example, I am shopping for a 20 carat unheated cushion cut blue sapphire. And wait. Sellers who have your jewel prospects will show up and show you their wares They’ll state a price. You’ll haggle. And you’ll end up paying only about 40% of their asking price. Your stone will be wrapped in paper and labeled with your name. And the transaction will be executed. Go get some lunch at a street stall, perhaps some sapphire blue dumplings, dyed with natural Butterfly Pea infusion, as we showed you in our Sapphire Delectables Daily Fix, and enjoy your afternoon.
If you want, you can then take a gander through the new gems market building a few blocks away, and watch the pros do their business on the open trading floor, then visit the gemological lab on site where you can get identification reports within an hour or two.
Photo: Ben Ashmole. Queensland Australia
Another lovely sapphire-laden adventure can be had in Queensland, Australia, one of the world’s most significant sources, with over 900 square km of sapphire bearing fields. Visit the towns of Rubyvale, Sapphire, Anakie and Willows Gemfields. In Williams Field, using little in the way of machinery, no corporate mining has ever been allowed.
And after you’ve had your fill of jewel jamming, head for Queensland’s sugary beaches and gaze and the sapphire sea.
Explore the colorful gem shops, galleries, jewellers, underground mines and digging areas. Take a guided tour of a walk-in underground mine or go on a tag-along digging tour. Or book a self-drive fossicking tour, armed with some maps and the necessary equipment, and explore the back tracks of the mining areas in your own vehicle. Buy a bucket of sapphire ‘wash’, learn to sieve it, and recognize sapphires in the rough.
If you don’t want to do the work yourself, head for the gem shops and galleries. Buy something already made or find a gem cutter to cut a rough stone you unearthed yourself.
In the town of Sapphire, you’ll find mines operating since the late 1800s. The landscape looks like a moonscape. Check out the historic Piano Tuners Grave at Retreat Creek. Fossicking areas in Sapphire include ‘Graves Hill’ and ‘Big Bessie’.
Photo: Sima K. Raw Sapphires.
In Rubyvale, you’ll find gem and jewelry shops, and the Australian Miners Historic Museum houses relics from the Sapphire Gemfields’ colourful history. Take the walk-in mine tour, where the underground temperature sits at a cool 24 to 27 degrees Celsius. Wander through the network of tunnels, including the tiny tunnels, called “tummy tunnels” used by the pioneer miners.
A new observatory offers visitors the chance to view the beautiful galaxy of stars in the outback night sapphire colored sky.
Or try Anakie, which hosts the annual ‘Gemfest – Festival of Gems’ every year in August.
Finally, the Willows Gemfields is known for its green sapphires and particularly large yellow sapphires. Some of the world’s most famous sapphires have been found on The Willows Gemfields, including a 332 carat rough yellow, aptly named the “Golden Willow”.
Hand mining and/or fossicking from old creek beds, which are now underground, happens here. You’ll seive your mud to separate out the sand and oversized rocks. Then you’ll put it through a wash before the sapphires can be hand sorted from the other heavy gravels. Fossicking on the Sapphire Gemfields is easy with equipment hire and fossicking licences available.
Photo: Whl.travel Sigiriya Rock Fortress, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Sigiriya Rock Fortress, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, is a spectacular sight and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the 5th century AD, it served as the capital of Sri Lanka after a bloody royal feud. King Kashyapa had a magnificent palace build a top this rock surrounded by walls and moats and an extensive system of gardens and water features. A mirror wall and frescoes of “maidens” in a protected cave in the rock which have been compared in style to the cave paintings in Ellora.
Photo: Jewels Next. Blue 4.89 carat Sapphire from Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is arguably the best source in the world for blue and yellow sapphires. Sizes range from 0.2 carat to giant 120 carat pieces in fine quality.
You can take a tour of these treasured place, beginning with a visit to the World Trade Center there, the hub of Sri Lankan gem trading. Next, see how heat treatment is performed to ehnance the stone color. Now, most sapphires are treated in this way. Of course untreated stones are far more valuable.
Photo: Opacity. Faced Sapphires from Sri Lanka
Visit the main gem market in Ratnapura. Then enjoy relaxing at Mirissa, one of the country’s beautiful beaches. And revel in Sri Lanka’s spicy cuisine as you admire your purchases.
Photo: Brent Moore. Town hall in Franklin, NC
If you want to try searching for sapphires a bit closer to home, you might be surprised to know you can do so in the tiny town of Franklin, in the Cowee Valley of North Carolina. They call themselves the “Gem Capital of the World.” They’ve been mining here since 1870.
Silky looking star sapphires are what you’ll find here.
It’s kind of a family holiday place, where you and the kids can get dirty and treasure hunt. If you find something, the locals can craft your rocks into rings, pendants or earrings. Many of your finds can be crafted in to jewelry. There is no longer any commercial mining, thanks to synthetic corundum being produced for industrial needs. Now, the sapphire mining exists only for tourists’ pleasure.
Sheffield is one of the few mines left that sells native dirt, which just might, if you are lucky, contain a sapphire or ruby nugget.
Driving to the western region of North Carolina, on the way to Franklin, you’ll see the Blue Ridge Mountains, rich with its lushly tumbling waterfalls and streams. But most of the local mines “cheat” by enriching the dirt with purchased uncut gems, so no one is ever disappointed. Then you go through the sifting and washing process and, voila, there is your very own gemstone!
Photo by: Tim Bocek. Gem Lake in the Sapphire Mountains, Montana
You might also be surprised to learn about Gem Mountain Sapphire Mine in Montana. It is one of the oldest and best sapphire mines in the world! Mining began there in 1892. The mine used to yield large stones, as well as smaller ones that are shipped to Switzerland for watch bearings, and other industrial uses, and has produced over 180 million carats of sapphire over the past 120 years.
Here at Gem Mountain, you can also buy a bucket of gravel, fortified with sapphire nuggets. They claim you have the same chances of finding a gem in your bucket as they do in finding one at the mine. Every year customers find tens of thousands of sapphires, and every year there are several hundred three carat or larger stones found that are worth hundreds, and even thousands, of dollars when finished as a cut and polished gemstone.
Gem Mountain is one of only two retail businesses in North America that own and operate their own heat treating furnaces for the color improvement in sapphire. They facet almost 20,000 stones a year for visitors from all over the world.
Photo: PumpkinSky. Purple Yogo Sapphire.
Read about the beauty of Sapphire all this week, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact, including Sapphire Soul, a piece about ethical mining, New Sapphire Pages, a new collection of books featuring sapphires, Sapphire Science Rocks!, the new science and technology of sapphires, and Sapphire Delectables…. yes, these are edible!
Get busy and enter the BN Competitions, Our theme this week is Sapphire. Send in your images and ideas. Deadline is 9.15.13.
