Did you know sapphires come in all colours except red? They are precious gemstones that belong to the mineral species corundum. It’s a form of aluminium oxide that we call Sapphire, except red corundum is called Ruby. Australia also produces mixed colours of green, yellow and blue (known as polychrome sapphires because they show more than one colour in a single stone) and we call them Parti Sapphires.
Yellow Sapphires have held spiritual meanings for centuries. The beautiful yellow sapphire gemstone represents divine grace and power. It is believed to be the gemstone of knowledge, wealth, and prosperity. It provides mental calm and courage, and it protects its wearer from accidental injury. It has been revered as ‘the gemstone of wisdom’ and attributed with energizing properties, assigning yellow sapphire as a powerful talisman bringing financial abundance, lightness, and joy. Yellow Sapphire is exceptional for calming and focusing the mind, encouraging beauty and intuition, and restoring balance within the body. It is the gemstone of loving relationships and good fortune.
When artists paint prophetically, yellow is used to symbolise happiness. It’s as though the colour embodies the sun. A touch of cadmium yellow in every painting adds warmth and richness. Yellow was Vincent van Gogh’s favourite colour. He preferred yellow ochre at the beginning of his career, later adding the new pigments cadmium yellow and chrome yellow. He said, “Yellow has the capability of charming God”. Yellow was significant in Sir Sidney Nolan’s Wimmera paintings. Yellow represented ‘home’.
On the visual spectrum, colours have a wavelength (measured in nanometres) and a frequency (measured in units of hertz or cycles per second). Yellow is 580nm and 5.16 1014 Hz, which puts yellow in the middle of the spectrum. No wonder it is the colour of calm and balance!
The Hebrew word for yellow is ‘tsahov’. In the Scriptures, it is used to describe objects, clothing, and the bright sunlight. The Hebrew word ‘zahav’ is used for gold and golden objects, also describing our English-language colour yellow. Both gold and yellow represent joy, happiness, glory, and the Divine Nature. The Hebrew language is filled with remarkable linguistic nuances and unexplainable ‘coincidences’ or ‘God-incidences’. The Hebrew numeric value for the word tsahov matches up with the wave frequencies of the colour yellow. How could this have been known thousands of years ago?
Style, elegance, and beautiful heritage. There’s nothing as utterly breathtaking as a stunning yellow sapphire. Fine, natural yellow sapphires are usually very bright clean stones with fantastic light reflection in all lighting, even candlelight. Their bright, cheerful brilliance sparkles endlessly and this makes them particularly good alternatives to diamonds in an engagement ring. Yellow sapphire engagement rings are on trend this year to be the sapphire ring of choice for summertime proposals.
Nature seems to have an easier time producing the geological conditions for yellow corundum and yellow sapphires are abundantly sourced from Sri Lanka, Australia, Burma, Thailand, and Madagascar. The best quality stones have a rich, vibrant yellow colour, with few inclusions and good clarity. Yellow sapphires frequently have fewer inclusions, and they are held to higher clarity standards than the blues and pinks. Their naturally high clarity is quite advantageous, as the canary-tone does little to hide inclusions. They range in colour from greenish lemon-yellow to golden orangish-yellow and everything in between and are often heat treated to enhance their colour, making untreated stones priced at a premium. The most loved yellow sapphire colour is a medium, vibrant, canary yellow.
Light yellow stones around 1 – 2 carat size are easily obtained and comparatively not expensive, however the larger the gemstone and the more intense the ‘yellow canary’ colour, the higher the price, sometimes reaching 6-figures.
The stunning gemstone pictured is an example of the finest quality Yellow Sapphire in an emerald cut, weighing 6.08 carat and priced at $21,930.
