The stone families
Sapphires, aquamarines, tourmalines and garnets make up the selection. Each family has its light, its hardness, its nuances: sapphire for depth and endurance, aquamarine for clarity, tourmaline for vividness, and the garnets, rhodolite, spessartite, tsavorite and demantoid, for warmth and frank greens.
How we observe them
In daylight first, then under the loupe and the refractometer. We look at colour, clarity, cut, and above all what the stone does with light: how it holds it, returns it, breaks it apart.
Why a photo is never enough
A photo freezes one moment and one light. A stone lives: it changes with the hour, the metal around it, the hand that wears it. That is why we prefer the crush in hand to the technical sheet. Each sheet on this site says the essential, without jargon; the rest is discovered between the fingers.