E/W Ceylon Blue Sapphire Ring

Sapphire is corundum: crystallised aluminium oxide, 9 on the Mohs scale, harder than any gem but diamond. Pure corundum has no colour at all; every colour comes from a trace element. Iron and titanium make it blue, chromium makes it pink, and the two together purple. When chromium turns it fully red it is called ruby instead, so every other colour of corundum, orange and yellow included, is sapphire.

The name comes through Latin from the Greek sappheiros, which probably meant lapis lazuli. Medieval Europe gave blue sapphire to kings and bishops as the colour of heaven, and a sapphire said to have been Edward the Confessor's still sits in the cross at the top of the British Imperial State Crown. Today almost every sapphire is heated to improve its colour, which makes one left as it came from the ground the rarer thing.

Sapphire is found in many parts of the world: Sri Lanka, worked for more than two thousand years, Madagascar, Myanmar, Thailand, Tanzania and Australia among them. Kashmir produced the most coveted blues of all, from a small deposit found in 1881 that gave its best within a few years.

Ceylon, the island's name until 1972, is still the trade's word for Sri Lanka's stones. Most come from the gem gravels around Ratnapura, whose name means city of gems, in the wet south-west of the island. The sapphires weathered out of ancient rock and settled in old riverbeds, where they are still dug from small pits and washed from the gravel in baskets. Ceylon blues are known for being lighter and brighter than most, cornflower rather than ink, and the island gives almost every other colour too, padparadscha included.

AusPost Express in Australia, DHL abroad, signed for and insured. Returns within the terms of the returns policy.

Take it off for the gym, the sea and the garden. Warm water, a drop of soap and a soft brush; dry with a soft cloth.