Rubies
If any gem rivals the diamond for devotion, it is the ruby. The two share fundamental strengths, but across many cultures the ruby’s hue has made it the more storied stone: raw passion, love, mystery and valour, in shades of transparent red and pink.
Hard enough for a lifetime
Rubies rank 9.0 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, sitting just below diamond (10.0) and moissanite (9.5). Practically, that means a ruby handles everyday wear the way few coloured stones can.
The colour that counts
When mined, rubies often carry hints of blue and brown; heating to around 2,000 degrees brings out the vibrant red the stone is known for. The most prized colour is a medium red, and the finest hue of all earned its own name in Burma’s Mogok Valley: “pigeon’s blood”.
The king of precious stones
In Sanskrit the ruby was called ratnaraj, roughly “the king of precious stones”, and an 11th-century Persian sage gave rubies “the first place in colour, beauty and rank” among all gems. By 1550 the goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini reckoned a flawless one-carat ruby eight times more valuable than a one-carat diamond.
The great rubies came from the Mogok Valley in upper Burma, mined intensively from 1885, with stones in slightly lighter tints from Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Kenya and Madagascar. Today rubies remain as sought after as ever, and symbolise more of human nature than perhaps any other gem.