What Is A Pink Emerald?
When I came across a press release from The Pink Emerald Company today I was a bit confused. I have never heard of a pink emerald. I checked my gem reference book which stated emphatically that emeralds are always green. So what to make of a press release touting the world's largest heart-shaped pink emerald? A little research reveals that the "pink emerald" is actually Morganite, a stone I mentioned earlier in the week. The story of the fight over the pink emerald name is quite an involved one. Over the past few years, Dr. Christopher W. Hartnett has bought up mass quantities of the pink beryl and wants to increase public awareness and price for the stone. He's got a pretty decent start, this 169-carat near flawless, intense vivid fancy stone is priced at $2.6 million. But I think that it may take a while before the public is ready to spend big bucks on the pink emerald.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dr. Christopher W. Hartnett Jan 12th 2007 11:28PM
The Pink Emerald Company has been actively selling "Morganite" as Pink Emerald for over 14 years now. Prices range between $150 and $25,000 per carat depending on the color intensity, size and the quality. Fine, top gem quality Pink Emeralds are extreamly rare and command top dollar both in the gem trade and in very fine retail stores.
Emerald, whether Green or Pink, is Be3 Al2 Si6 O18 Beryllium-Aluminum Silicate. The press release you refer to also clearly mentions that the gem and jewelry trade sometimes refer to Pink Emerald by its mineral name, Morganite. For the record, the mineral name for Diamond is Carbon. The mineral name for Ruby and Sapphire is Corundum. 10 out of 10 customers asked, prefer the name Pink Emerald to Morganite. Very fine, large Pink Emeralds(Morganite), are hardly ever found outside of museums, private collections and very top jewelry store.
The picture of the Morganite necklace posted in Deidre Woollard's previous post is a very top world class Morganite that is worth well over $5,000 carat yet it is not for sale because it has been donated to the Houston museum because it is do rare. This gemstone is under 50 carats. If it was for sale, it would sell instanly at that price but unfortunately, it is not for sale.
Fine Pink Diamonds can cost as much as $250,000 per carat and sometimes even more. Kobe Bryant bought his wife an 8 carat Pink Diamond for over $3 million dollars. Pink Emeralds are 125,000 times rarer than Diamonds. The 169 carat heart shaped Pink Emerald in the press release is for sale for $2.5 million. Actually it is a steal for only $14,500 per carat relatively speaking. Call it Pink Emerald or call it by its old mineral name, "Morganite", either way, if you have one that is over 100 carats and it is a top pink color and it is very clean, it will be priced at over one million dollars. If it was 169 carats and was the more common Pink Diamond, the price would be over $100 million. So in reality and using common sense, the Pink Emerald at $2.5 million and being 169 carats in size, relatively speaking, is a bargin. Happy Valentine's Day and Think Pink.
Christine Jan 19th 2007 3:15AM
Yes I was surprised to read about pink emeralds too. Emeralds are by definition green. It should be called pink beryl or morganite. Though pink emerald is certainly more catchy. And may make consumers think it's a new stone just found.
Wayne Morgan Jan 21st 2007 4:10PM
What is wrong with calling something that it really is? Would the "diamond" market be what it is if it was called "carbon"? The phrase "Carbon is a girl's best friend" just doesn't quite sound as sexy. It's all perception. You ladies out there would much rather have a shiny Pink Emerald around your neck or on your finger than a Morganite. And I know you would rather have a Green Emerald than a nice Beryl. Dr. Hartnett should be praised for his efforts in educating the gem world. Anyone with any business sense would immediately begin selling this stone as Pink Emerald.
The reference to Emerald as green only is a misconception. Modern references to something being "emerald colored" meant the object in question was a shade of green. Emerald is a stone, not a color. There can be many colors of stone, for example, Red Diamonds and Blue Diamonds.
Why not call this stone exactly what it is...Pink Emerald?
Theodore Hens Jan 26th 2007 7:51PM
Pink Emerald's are beautiful and can be a wonderful Valentine's Day gift. Actually it is American Gem Lab's offical gemstone for Valentine's Day 2007. Morganite is just the mineral name for Pink Emerald's. Pink Emerald's are much rarer than diamonds but just as beautiful and they are not man made like many colored diamonds are today. Think Pink !!!
Dr. Hans Volker Feb 14th 2007 6:23PM
Hi, Happy Valentine's Day. I am also a gemologist and since the pink emerald has been voted as the "official gemstone for Valentine's Day" I thought I would post a response today that I just sent to a friend inquiring about the nomenclature used for pink emerald. Have a great Valentine's Day and enjoy.
Dr. Hans Volker
Gemologist
Global Gemological Labs
New York, New York
The Largest Pink Emeralds in the World
The American Museum of Natural History in New York City, USA, is home to one of the greatest Pink Emerald statue carvings of all time, a beautiful 2230 carat Goddess of Immortality, carved of pink emerald rough from Madagascar. This statue, although exquisite, is mistakenly credited in the Museum’s own collection book as being “the largest carved Pink Emerald in the world.” This is not so.
The global honor and top position for the largest carved or faceted Pink Emerald in the world is more accurately attributable Pinkerton, aka "Pinky", the 5325 carat porcine (pig), carved by the great German master carver Manfred Wild of the world renowned European carving and gemstone center of Idar Oberstein, Germany. Pinky has faceted precious ruby eyes and is owned by The Pink Emerald Company, LLC of the United States and is by far, the largest Pink Emerald in the world. "Pinky” has been written about extensively in numerous world publications and has also appeared in a colored picture on the front cover of National Jeweler Magazine.
The largest known faceted Pink Emerald precious gemstone is a 598.70-carat cushion-shape gem from Madagascar, currently in the collection of the British Museum, London, England.
The second largest Pink Emerald in the world is an oval 390.55 carat stone known as the “Prince of Peace” and is owned by The Pink Emerald Company, Boone, North Carolina, USA. This stone was faceted and mined in Brazil.
The largest Heart Shaped Pink Emerald in the world is a 169 carat perfectly cut stone with 100% brilliancy also mined in Brazil and is part of a private collection owned by the Hartnett family of Chicago, Illinois, USA.
More about the( History of Pink Emeralds
(Mineral names: morganite, pink beryl and Beryllium-Aluminum Silicate )
Pink Emeralds have a rather interesting past that includes some mystery, intrigue and at times, nomenclature and historical controversies. Depending on with whom you speak, you will probably get a slightly different version of exactly where these precious gemstones were first discovered and how they were first named. Regardless of the story version, what is clear is it seems that the gemstone was first discovered on the planet in the late 1800’s. Probably the first found crystals being called Vorobievite, Worobieffite and Rosterite, though the majority of references began to use the modern mineral term, morganite around the early 1900’s when it was first discovered in Madagascar and then later in the United States, California, in the Pala pegmatites and was thrust into greater public awareness at this time.
Regardless of the name and its actual time of discovery, the exact chemical composition of the mineral is clearly known to be Be3 Al2 Si6 O18 or Beryllium-Aluminum Silicate. Emerald or Beryl as it is sometimes called, like almost all gem and mineral varieties, can be found in almost every color of the rainbow. The Chemical composition of beryl is beryllium (14%) aluminum (19%) silicate (67%), usually containing alkali ions, other minerals, water, and gases. The green colored beryl is usually known as Green Emerald yet the very lighter green stones continued to be called Green Beryl. Some of the older mineral dealers to this day refer to the pink variety of beryllium-aluminum silicate as, Pink Beryl instead of Pink Emerald. The pink colored beryl is derived from a natural coloring agent within the stone which is due to the trace element Manganese +3.
Of all the beryl/emerald crystals, the Pink Emerald’s history is the most obscure yet remains manageable with a small amount of effort and research. Before geology was an exact science, the stone was mistaken for what was later called Kunzite, Pink Sapphire, Pink Tourmaline, Alexandrite, Rose Quartz and other rosé colored crystals. It is also interesting to note, the word brilliance is probably derived from the ancient Greek word for beryl, berullos, which actually means a crystal, which may further back date this pink beauty and other varieties of colored emeralds but no concrete evidence to this effect seem to be currently available yet one can justifiably intuit and suspect such was the case.
Pink Emeralds, as they are now known today in the jewelry and gemstone worlds, come in colors ranging from very light soft pink, to strong pink, to violet, to an actual salmon- orange- pink color. Despite their colorful past, everyone agrees, Pink Emeralds undoubtedly hold one of the very top, undisputed positions in the gem world and they are one of the most beautiful rare gemstones to have ever been discovered anywhere on the planet. They are truly rare, precious jewels, fit for the kings and queens of the modern world, and at a reasonable, affordable price.
Pink Emeralds, the pink gemstone variety of beryl is also termed in the mineral world as morganite, named for John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), who was better known in his day as the famed J.P. Morgan. He was one of America's great financiers and bankers, the third richest man in the country in his day (only John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie surpassed him), and he was a philanthropist on a grand scale. It has been said that, at their peak, the Morgan and Rockefeller interests controlled some $20 billion in corporate assets, about one-fifth of the total national wealth!
When Mr. Morgan purchased the mineral collection of Clarence Sweet Bement (1846-1923) in 1900 for the sum of $100,000 (a huge amount for ordinary people of those days) it was a relatively small amount for him. Through the efforts of George Frederick Kunz (1856-1932), a noted gemologist and head buyer for the jewelry store Tiffany’s of New York, Morgan donated what is said to be "the finest collection of minerals ever assembled" to the American Museum of Natural History. The J. P. Morgan collection today is still displayed at the Morgan Memorial Hall of Minerals at this world class Museum in New York City, USA.
The American Museum of Natural History is also home to one of the great pink emerald statues of all time, a beautiful 2230 carat Statue of the Goddess of Immortality, carved of morganite rough from Madagascar. This statue, although exquisite, is mistakenly credited in the Museum book as being the largest carved pink emerald in the world. This global honor and top position is more accurately attributable and held by Pinkerton, the 5325 carat porcine (pig) carved by the great German master carver, Manfred Wild, of the leading European gem center of Idar Oberstein, Germany. "Pinky", as he has been affectionately called, has graced many global publications and has appeared with a very large colored picture of himself on the front cover of National Jeweler Magazine, the leading jewelry trade publication in the United States.
Both Kunz and Morgan had other joint ventures together in the gem world. The California find of pink emeralds was actually attributed to geologist George Kunz who named it morganite after his friend and long time financial backer, J. P. Morgan. Kunz also found a mineral he named Kunzite (after himself) in California 13 years earlier, while he worked for and was funded by financier J. Pierpont Morgan. History tells, that up until the morganite find, all minerals were given the name of their "finders" rather than the name of someone else. Morgan was said to be very upset when Kunz named Kunzite after himself because Morgan felt he had paid for the Kunzite exploration and so he should have been given the credit for its discovery, instead of his employee George Kunz.
About the time of the California mineral find by Kunz, J. P. Morgan was living in New York City as well as Old Brookville, New York and had just finished construction of his own private country club, later named Nassau Country Club, in Glen Cove, New York on Long Island. This was over 2200 miles from where his friend Kunz had just unearthed his second mineral find in North America, in Pala, California. Remembering well Morgan's displeasure over the naming of Kunzite 13 years earlier, Kunz gave a name to what was thought to be a new mineral find and called the mineral MORGANITE after his employer, J.P. Morgan.
Kunz sent a telegram to Morgan announcing his name for the newly discovered mineral. Morgan was very please with his new found chance at immortality by having a stone named after himself. This mineral "naming" became the beginning of a very large controversy in the mineral world at the time. First, it was felt by many that this really wasn't the first find of pink Beryllium-Aluminum Silicate (the chemical name for all emeralds) in the world. Many felt that a man named Roster had discovered this same mineral three years earlier in Africa. Second, Morgan wasn't even the one who actually found the mineral in North America; Kunz had done this, so why should Morgan have his name so prominently attached to its discovery? The controversy continues on for generations.
Just as the mineral name for diamond is technically carbon and the mineral name for ruby is technically corundum, morganite has been accepted over time as the mineral name for Pink Emerald. Obviously the gemstone name Pink Emerald is much more pleasing to the ear, heart and mind than the mineral name, morganite. Although historically inaccurate, because of the provenance of J.P. Morgan, it is probably fair to assume morganite will continue to prevail in the “gemological and mineral worlds” as the technical name for the faceted precious jewelry stone, more appropriately and fittingly known in the public domain and loved and cherished in the gemstone and jewelry worlds as, "Pink Emerald".
Dmitry Paradis Feb 15th 2007 11:47AM
To #3. The reason diamond is called a diamond is because it is an accepted particular crystal structure of carbon and is well defined. Just like graphite, another accepted form of carbon. The reason a ruby is not called a red sapphire, or a sapphire is not called a blue ruby is because it has been widely accepted that that's what different impurities of corundum are called. The ONLY issue here is branding and marketability. The fact that a name 'pink corundum' is not identifiable with the population (and is therefore unmarketable) is the only reason why it is called 'pink sapphire'.
Your argument with Emerald being a stone only (without association to green colour) is a weak one. Whenever you think of Emerald, or Ruby, green and red come to mind right away. Imagine calling your wall colour "yellow lilac" or "red sage" or "blue carrot", you get the idea.
To sum everything up, the only reason this stone is marketed as Pink Emerald is because Pink Beryl (much nicer sounding in my opinion) is not identifiable as precious stone by majority of population, and Dr. Harnett has a vested interest in selling this stone at top dollar. Can't blame him.