Pigeon blood, issued in Jaipur: GSI brings the trade names home
GSI now issues Pigeon Blood, Royal Blue and Padparadscha reports from Jaipur, Mumbai, New York and Bangkok. Untreated stones only. Jaipur cuts the world's finest rubies and could not name them at home.
By Carat Capital Gemstones Desk
What changed
A ruby cut in Jaipur can now be called pigeon blood in Jaipur. Gemological Science International has begun issuing coloured stone reports carrying the recognised colour trade names, Rapaport reported on 19 August: Pigeon Blood for ruby, Royal Blue and Padparadscha for sapphire.
What it means
- This is a logistics story wearing the clothes of a nomenclature story. The gemmology has not moved.
- What has moved is that the report can be written where the stone is finished, which takes weeks and a courier run out of the process and puts the premium-setting judgement inside the Indian trade rather than at the end of it. That is worth money in Jaipur.
- It is also worth watching for the obvious reason: a name that pays a premium is a name under pressure, and one more issuer is more supply of the name than there was before. The check on that is the untreated-only condition, and it is the line this paper will hold GSI to.
Key figures
| colour trade names: Pigeon Blood, Royal Blue, Padparadscha | 3 |
|---|---|
| laboratories issuing them: Jaipur, Mumbai, New York, Bangkok | 4 |
| the date the reports began, per Rapaport | 19 Aug |
| treatments permitted; untreated stones only | 0 |
Source: what GSI has begun issuing, and where
A name that had to be granted abroad, granted at home
The reports are available from the laboratory's Jaipur, Mumbai, New York and Bangkok operations. It is the first time such reports have been issued in India.
Old language, real money
The names are much older than the reports.
Pigeon blood and royal blue have been trade language for generations and laboratory language since the 1990s, and they carry real money: a stone that qualifies sells at a premium to one that does not, on a judgement about colour that a buyer cannot make from a photograph.
Until now a stone finished in Jaipur had to travel to a laboratory abroad to be given one. Meenu Brijesh Vyas, GSI's global head gemologist, said of the change: That ends today.
Hue, tone, saturation, and one hard condition
The criteria behind the names are not impressionistic. GSI defines each by specified ranges of hue, tone and saturation, assessed under standardised lighting and supported by spectroscopic and colorimetric analysis, and grants the designations only to untreated stones. Heated, diffused or otherwise enhanced material is not eligible whatever its colour.
That last condition does most of the work, because heat is the commonest treatment in both ruby and sapphire and much the cheapest route to a colour that looks like the name.
How it compares with what Switzerland publishes
The conditions sit close to what the Swiss laboratories already publish. SSEF requires of pigeon blood red a strong, vivid red saturation with no or only slight purplish tint, strong ultraviolet fluorescence from high chromium and low iron, no colour zoning seen from above, freedom from eye-visible dark inclusions and no fissure or cavity filling.
Its royal blue requires strong, vivid blue without greenish, greyish or purple tint, a spectrum dominated by iron-titanium charge transfer, colour homogeneity and good transparency. SSEF applies pigeon blood red only to rubies showing no indication of any treatment.
Another laboratory issuing on comparable terms in the city that cuts the stones changes where the judgement happens, not what the judgement is.