Luke Jerdy and Daisy Wood-Davis Tanzanite Engagement Ring

The stars from Hollyoaks,Luke Jerdy and Daisy Wood-Davis, are showing off their new engagement ring, that actually includes Tanzanite. Now this ring isn't just a Tanzanite, but includes a Diamond and Emerald as well. 

This is what Daisy had to say:

"I’ve never felt a happiness like this. It’s so surreal but nothing has ever felt more natural. I can’t wait to marry my best friend and celebrate how lucky we are to have found what we have. Not to mention, he designed me the engagement ring of my DREAMS. "I have spent the last few days staring lovingly at him and the ring in equal measure (maybe more the ring) Let the celebrations commence!"

Tanzanite Engagement Rings

Now if you are in the market for a Tanzanite engagement ring and are just not sure what to look for, Steve Moriarty has created a video to help you to choose the best Tanzanite for your engagement ring.

Video Transcription

So you're interested in buying a tanzanite engagement ring. I'm Steve Moriarty from Moriarty's Gem Art. We're a jeweler on the square in Crown Point, Indiana and we also represent ourselves as tanzanitejewelry.designs.com.

I'm going to try and explain to you what you should be looking for in tanzanite and how to determine whether the tanzanite is a quality stone. Tanzanite is generally graded by the four Cs, just like a diamond is which is color, cut, clarity and carat weight.

The first, the most important factor probably is the color because tanzanite is kind of unique. It does a color shift in different lights and you want to look at this factor and determine what the color is in multiple lighting sources. So when you have a stone, you want to go to the varying light sources. We've got a couple of the sources here. This would be a daylight equivalent fluorescent bulb. You can of course go to daylight if you have it available. And in this light the stone should appear more blue. Let's get this bigger stone out, a little easier to see. So in this light, it'll appear more blue. This is daylight.

And then when you go to incandescent light, the stone will be more violet. This particular stone is strongly violet. It doesn't show in the video real well, but these are the situation you're going to try and see what the different colors of this stone can be.

They will vary in all different types of lights, so you'd like to know that the stone is a beautiful stone in all lights, because your fiance or a future wife is going to have it on all day and she's going to see this stone in every light. So it's important that you take the time to look at different lighting sources and determine just what the colors are ... not what they are, but that they're pleasing colors.

In general, the depth of color is how the value of tanzanite is determined. The deeper the color in general, it's better. They are on occasion are too dark, but that's a rare case. So you want to be looking for a deeper color if you're looking for the finest of tanzanite.

Next would be the cut. Cut is extremely important just because so many stones are so poorly cut. We are cutters and we stress the quality of the cutting just because it makes a huge difference in just how that stone looks.

The issues that you're going to have with tanzanite are stones that are cut to shallow is one of the main factors. That's a problem. This picture kind of represents a stone that's cut somewhat correctly and this stone is cut too shallow. So the effects of this, when you have a stone that's cut this shallow, when you look down through the stone, you see right through the stone. This is called a window, and it's so common in tanzanite. It happens because the cutter tries to save weight, and to do that they have to change the angles to angles below critical and they no longer reflect.

So when you look at a stone face up, looking down through the table, you can look through the center of the stone, you'll see no brilliance. So if you rotate it slightly and there's no brilliance down the middle, you know that the stone was cut too shallow. Occasionally they're cut so shallow, you can literally put it over a written page and you can read through it. So this affects brilliant so much that it's a factor you want to avoid.

The other factor is cutting the crown too shallow. Sometimes you'll see stones that there's almost no crown. This is almost flat across. The problem with that, again, it affects brilliance and down the line, let's say in five or 10 years, because tanzanite is not the hardest stone on the planet, you're eventually going to have to re-polish the crown, the top of the stone.

This is where all the damage will occur. This is the part she looks at. And after a while it'll just have a frosted look and you'll want to re-polish the stone. When there's no crown, it's difficult for the cutter to re-polish the stone. What he ends up having to do is cut in the width of the stone to get some crown material to actually be able to cut a crown on it. So you end up, maybe the stone doesn't fit back in the mounting, but you'll end up a smaller stone. So if you buy a stone that's cut correctly to start with, re-polishing is not an issue. You'll lose very little weight of the stone and you'll lose no diameter on the stone. You could cut it three or four times and not have a problem.

The other factors with cut are the quality of the polish. Polish is extremely important and again, overseas cutters, because they're using old equipment or worn out equipment, you'll see lines and little divots in the facet. If you look at the table and you can easily see lines running across the stone or chips, little divots that just means that they were using poor equipment or not polishing long enough to get those lines out of the stone. So you want to avoid a poor polish because it has a huge affect on the brilliance of the stone.

Next would be the clarity of the stone. Clarity of tanzanite is usually not an issue. Most of the times we cut tanzanite very clean because after we cut them, they need to be heated. Almost all tanzanite [inaudible 00:06:00] are heated. We put them in an oven, heat them to a thousand degrees and it removes the yellow coloration. That's one of the three colors that's in tanzanite. They typically appear blue, although this one that we looked at earlier is all natural, it came out of the ground blue, but most of them look brownish, so we heat them to improve their color.

When you do heat them, sometimes there are inclusions in it and you'll get fracturing inside the stone from those inclusions. So that's one characteristic you want to look out for. I'll try and show you how to do that with a tool that's always handy to you, and that's your iPhone or phone.

So while most tanzanites are flawless, or at least eye clean, and eye clean is mostly what you should be looking for, one way to identify inclusions in a stone and to see if there is any major fractures, because sometimes it's hard to see the inclusions in a stone just looking at it normally, but using your cell phone, if you just take the flashlight that's available to you, if you shine the light from the side of the stone, it'll just light up the interior. In any inclusions particular fractures caused by heat, they're going to reflect light dramatically and you'll easily see it. So if you just rotate the stone and look closely at it ...

You don't have to reject a stone, just because a few minor inclusions. You may see needles in them or a little crystal. But when you see a major fracture in it, something that reflects, these are things that in strong light like this, you're going to easily see, so when you get out in daylight, these fractures will show up visibly.

Finally, it's carat weight. Carat weight in tanzanite varies a little bit from diamond. An example here would be this stone. This is a one carat stone. It measures 6 millimeter, whereas a diamond can measure 6.5 millimeter for the same carat weight. So generally tanzanite is a little heavier for a given size. So if you're looking for a particular look, don't necessarily look at carat weight, look more at the millimeter size of the stone.

You might want to think about buying a little bigger stone than you might have thought about in a diamond just because with the color, the color gets better the bigger the stone. It's like water, the deeper you look into the stone, the deeper the color, and tanzanite larger sizes will generally have a deeper, richer color. So you might want to be thinking about a carat and a half to three carat or even bigger.

So to give you a price comparison for tanzanite, if you were looking at a one carat diamond currently, you'd be looking at 4 to $7,000. You could buy a three carat tanzanite for under $2,500. So it makes it affordable to buy a little bigger stone. And when it comes down to the tanzanite running out, which it will probably during your married life, there'll be no more tanzanite [inaudible 00:09:23] and you could find that tanzanite is much more valuable than the diamonds.

Hopefully this information will be helpful in your search for tanzanite. If you get a chance, stop by and see us at Moriarty's Gem Art on the square in Crown Point, Indiana or shop us online at tanzanitejewelrydesigns.com. We are cutters. I do travel to Tanzania and on our website we have full pictures and videos of the stones that we try and make it as accurate as possible. And we've also initiated a new grading system that gives you an overall quality grade from one to a thousand which takes in all the factors that we've just discussed.

Thanks so much for watching. I'm Steve Moriarty from tanzanitejewelrydesigns.com.