The many colors of Tourmaline provide an alternative October birthstone.
Tourmaline is 7-7.5 on the Mohs Hardness scale making it more durable than it’s rival for October babies – Opal.
We have an extensive collection of loose tourmaline for collectors or custom design pieces. Many tourmaline jewelry pieces are on display in our gallery.
Tourmaline comes in a variety of colors. Usually, iron-rich tourmalines are black to bluish-black to deep brown, while magnesium-rich varieties are brown to yellow, and lithium-rich tourmalines are almost any color: blue, green, red, yellow, pink, etc. Rarely, it is colorless. Bi-colored and multicolored crystals are common, reflecting variations of fluid chemistry during crystallization. Crystals may be green at one end and pink at the other, or green on the outside and pink inside; this type is called watermelon tourmaline. Some forms of tourmaline are dichroic in that they change color when viewed from different directions.