Sugilite (LARGE rare gemstone)

Item Description

Suglite to my mind has one of the great colors in the mineral world. If you eliminate Amethyst and Fluorite, there are not many purple minerals out there, and Sugilite has one of the most distinctive hues of purple of any species. Not only is Sugilite rare, but it's often found in small, non-descript examples, and is virtually unseen in GEM quality material. Here we have a remarkable GEM QUALITY faceted stone of Suglite from the famous Wessels Mine. On the surface, this gem has a saturated purple hue in reflected light, but when it's backlit, it GLOWS with a vivid reddish-purple hue. I'm amazed at the size of rough that produced a stone like this. Usually, the larger/thicker chunks of Sugilite will be virtually opaque, so the fact that this gem passes light and still retains that amazing color is a big deal. I've seen plenty of lapidary grade Sugilites that were polished into beads or cabochons, but to have a FACETED STONE of this material in this size and quality is significant. If you collect rare gems, this is something that I'll bet you don't have in your collection. You never see 18+ carats faceted examples of Sugilite like this. The stone has a "Checkerboard Pear" cut, and looks great from either side. For reference, this species was named after Ken-ichi Sugi, and is almost always mispronounced as "Soo-jill-ite", but should properly be pronounced with a hard "g" as in "grip". This stone came to us with a price tag of $1,847.00 retail.