Piaget Limelight Paradise
Summer is coming! It’s high time to check your summer wardrobe and replenish it with new bright and eye-catching accessories as for example rings and necklaces from the new Piaget collection — Limelight Paradise.
Summer is the season of fruit. And Piaget suggests adding to fresh fruit a little bit of shining jewellery ones. The jewellery pieces from the new Piaget collection remind of delicious summer cocktails and look conformably. Even the names of rings and necklaces are borrowed from famous cocktails.
So take a sip of a delicious pink tourmaline Sex on the Beach cocktail, savour the sculpted citrine of a Caipirinha or inhale the scent of the frangipani flower gracing a Blue Hawaiian. By associating world-famous cocktails with a single gemstone in unexpected and mouth-watering compositions, Piaget teases the senses and offers a toast to nocturnal pleasures with its Limelight Paradise collection.
The jewellery from Piaget Limelight Paradise collection sparkles with diamonds, tourmalines, citrines, tsavorites and peridots and looks like a fairy-tale treasure of some Caribbean island.
18-carat white gold ring set with 214 brilliant-cut diamonds, 1 round-cut green tourmaline and 1 citrine
18-carat white gold ring set with 214 brilliant-cut diamonds, 1 round-cut pink tourmaline and 1 peridot
18-carat yellow gold pineapple-shaped charm set with 17 brilliant-cut diamonds, 17 brilliant-cut brown diamonds, 1 citrine, 115 tsavorite
What are stars made of? Famous emeralds.
Nature is full of wonders, and this can be easily proved by the example of the gemstones, that mother Nature presents us lavishly. Explore the wonders of the most famous and beautiful emeralds in the world!
In the times of Spanish conquer of South America, in one of the temples on the territory of today Peru the conquistadors found an emerald as big, as an ostrich egg – that means the length of 16-18cm and the supposed weight of 3 kilos. The stone was considered an embodiment of the goddess, Umina by name, and was worshipped. The Spaniards did not manage to take the emerald, for the priests of the temple hid it carefully. The emerald hasn’t been found by now.
The biggest of all rough emeralds was mined in 1970 in Ukraine and called “Lenin Jubileeâ€. Its weight amounted to 5360g (26800K), and by the year 1990 it had been exhibited in the mine museum.
The State collection in Vienna disposes of a little vase (a bottle for cosmetics), that was carved between XVI-XVII centuries in Milan from an entire Columbian emerald. The height of the bottle is 10cm, and the weight of it makes up 536g (2681K). It is supposed, that this vase was used by Alexander Dumas as a prototype of Count Monte-Christo’s bonbonnière, made of a whole emerald.
A famous emerald with the name “Stolen†also has an interesting history. It was found in 1881 in North Carolina and had the weight of 1270K. The godsend was exhibited in Smithson institute museum – and stolen from it. Specialists agree, that now the emerald must be possessed by a private collectioner.
The Mogol emerald with the parameters of 5 x 3,8 x 3,5 cm and the weight of 217,8K is also worth mentioning. It was found in Columbia in XVII century, and after that it was, supposingly, bought by a Moslem leader and only in the 1980-s it appeared in the market again. The emerald resembles a rectangle with rounded corners, the front side of it is covered with fretwork, showing plant ornament, and on the back side one can see the carved text of a Moslem prayer and the date – 1695. The stone is pierced – probably, it was used as a turban decoration.
The Hermitage disposes of an emerald pendant of Spanish origin, made up in XVI and looking like a cross with five emeralds with a carvel applied to it. The hull of the carvel is carved from and emerald, probably a Columbian one, and has the weight of 125K.
See the world in emerald lighting
The name emerald originates from the Latin word “esmerauds” and the Greek one ’smaragdos’, that have Semitic or ancient Indian roots. Supposingly, the word meant ‘a green gem’ and could be attributed to different jewels.
A green variety of limpid beryl, called emerald or smaragd, has been considered one of the most beautiful jewels for 4 000 years, and is also said to be very beneficial for a man’s well-being. From time to time emerald was valued even higher, than diamond, however, today, when the scientists have a possibility to produce artificial emeralds, the price of the gem has fallen.
The variety of green tints, emerald can possess, really can strike one imagination: dill-green, spinach-green, olive, pistachio, laurel, the colour of fresh leaves, dark-green. This variety is created by a different correlations of chrome, iron and vanadium admixtures, and the colouring is very stable. Only the emeralds of the highest quality can be limpid.
In ancient times the stone was mined near present-day Asuan, and the old mines are known today as The Emerald Mines of Cleopatra, though the works there had started long before the famous queen of beauty was born. Emerald used to be very important for the Egyptians, as there was a tradition to decorate mummies with this gem. The Emerald Mines of Cleopatra were re-opened at the beginning if the XIX century. But, of course, the most beautiful emeralds of the highest quality come to the customers from Columbia. It were Incas to start mining emeralds in this area, and later the mines were utterly forgotten and found only by the Spaniards, that started to supply Europe with strikingly beautiful Columbian emeralds in the XVI century, and continued to stay the only suppliers in the world up to the middle of the XIX century. Today high-quality emeralds are also mined in Russia, the USA, India, Afghanistan and South America.
Limpid gems, that are considered to be of the best quality, are extremely rare. Usually they are turbid, and this effect is produced by minor impurities or splits, which are called by the specialists with a French word jardin – garden. These inclusions prove, that the stone is of the natural origin.