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The Duchess of Cambridge owns the most stunning collection of jewellery in the world.  This collection includes rare and valuable heirloom pieces given to her by the Queen as well exquisite items gifted to her by her husband Prince William.  Let us take a closer look at some of them. The Kate Middleton Sapphire Engagement Ring It’s been many years since Kate Middleton and Prince William’s engagement, but the stunning 12-carat oval sapphire engagement ring that marked the occasion remains a phenomenon. Surrounded by a whopping 14 diamonds, the iconic ring that once belonged to Prince William’s late mother, Princess...

Yogo sapphires or Montana sapphires are blue sapphires, a colored variety of corundum, found in Montana, primarily in Yogo Gulch (part of the Little Belt Mountains) in Judith Basin County, Montana. Yogo sapphires are typically cornflower blue, a result of trace amounts of iron and titanium. They have high uniform clarity and maintain their brilliance under artificial light. Because Yogo sapphires occur within a vertically dipping resistive igneous dike, mining efforts have been sporadic and rarely profitable. It is estimated that at least 28 million carats (5.6 t or 5.5 long tons or 6.2 short tons) of Yogo sapphires are still in the ground. Jewelry containing Yogo sapphires was given to First Ladies Florence Harding and Bess Truman; in addition,...

Sapphires are mined from alluvial deposits or from primary underground workings. Commercial mining locations for sapphire and ruby include (but are not limited to) the following countries: Afghanistan, Australia, Myanmar/Burma, Cambodia, China, Colombia, India, Kenya, Laos, Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, United States, and Vietnam.Sapphires from different geographic locations may have different appearances or chemical-impurity concentrations, and tend to contain different types of microscopic inclusions. Because of this, sapphires can be divided into three broad categories: classic metamorphic, non-classic metamorphic or magmatic, and classic magmatic.Sapphires from certain locations, or of certain categories, may be more...

A rare variety of natural sapphire, known as color-change sapphire, exhibits different colors in different light. Color change sapphires are blue in outdoor light and purple under incandescent indoor light, or green to gray-green in daylight and pink to reddish-violet in incandescent light. Color change sapphires come from a variety of locations, including Madagascar, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Tanzania. Two types exist. The first features the chromium chromophore that creates the red color of ruby, combined with the iron + titanium chromophore that produces the blue color in sapphire. A more rare type, which comes from the Mogok area of...

A star sapphire is a type of sapphire that exhibits a star-like phenomenon known as asterism; red stones are known as “star rubies”. Star sapphires contain intersecting needle-like inclusions following the underlying crystal structure that causes the appearance of a six-rayed “star”-shaped pattern when viewed with a single overhead light source. The inclusion is often the mineral rutile, a mineral composed primarily of titanium dioxide. The stones are cut en cabochon, typically with the center of the star near the top of the dome. Occasionally, twelve-rayed stars are found, typically because two different sets of inclusions are found within the same stone, such as a combination of fine needles of...