The engagement ruby ring is one of those unusual pieces of jewelry that seems quite out of the ordinary when it comes to bridal jewelry. When most people think of engagement rings, they think of diamonds and not the other precious stones like Ruby, Emerald and Sapphire. This would be a mistake because although no stone is as durable as diamond, each of these three precious stones have their own appeal.
When it comes to precious colored stone, it is more of an emotional response to the beauty of the color than the perfection of the cut. Ruby is a part of the Corundum mineral family is second only to diamond in hardness. It is also called the Lord of gems for a reason. This is because it is practically priceless if it is a clean stone in the pure pigeon blood red color in sizes larger than 2 carats. You are not likely to see very many five carat and above sizes in a relatively inclusion free, nice colored Ruby. This is why you don’t see many women with plus size ruby engagement rings.
This makes it an ideal precious stone to be used as a center stone in a beautiful engagement ring. You may remember when the late Princess Diana got engaged to Prince Charles and her engagement ring had a beautiful oval blue sapphire center stone surrounded by diamonds. This was no ordinary sapphire. It was a prized, untreated , and fabulously rare Kashmiri sapphire of the purest cornflower blue. This rare sapphire would be astronomically priced today, but if you can imagine an equally clear and pure colored Ruby of the same size you’d be talking about a price many times that of the sapphire simply because such rubies are quite rare.
The antique ruby ring has a rather sordid role in history as being one of the most misidentified gemstones important pieces of jewelry. The gemstone spinel with its orangey red color and hardness close that of the ruby was often inadvertently used in ruby and diamond rings in antiquity. These pieces were later identified in modern times as having a spinel center stone rather than a ruby. Now that we can identify rubies as rubies and even clear up confusion with ruby treatments and synthetic rubies, there is no need to fear that when we buy ruby jewelry from a reputable store that we are buying the genuine gemstone.
A ruby and diamond ring is the natural combination of stones to be used in a ruby engagement ring. The most common style in this type of ruby diamond ring is that of an oval ruby center stone with either a matched pair of diamond side stones or smaller diamonds studding areas of the mounting or combination of both.
emerald cut, cushion cut, marquis cut, round and pear. Oval however gives you the most bang for the buck. To the right this is a round ruby ring with two matched pear shape diamonds. An oval or cushion would look slightly better with the diamonds if you can imagine that.
the side diamonds are especially white, then this helps to bring out the beautiful red color of the ruby.The other common shapes of matched side stone diamonds that you will find in a ruby ring our rounds, pears and baguettes. Round diamonds have better optics than the other shapes and are a good contrast to the subdued red of most medium to higher quality rubies.
{ 0 comments }