These are faceted lab created rutile, titanium dioxide--each is individually photographed. We have both near-colorless rutile (ranging from very faint yellow to light blue) and 'honey' rutile with a golden color--some of the honey rutile also has fine silky inclusions giving them a turbid or sleepy look. These typically look milkier in the photos and more brilliant in the hand.
This is rutile, and it has the highest dispersion of any transparent gem material. In practical terms that means it has the most insane fire you will ever see in a gemstone, throwing rainbows with the slightest provocation. It is simply impossible to capture on camera--they look good in a picture but great in person. It only has two downsides: its relatively low hardness around 6.5 (harder than tanzanite and suitable for pendant usage but not ideal for rings), and how difficult it is to get these days.
Crystals of rutile are grown for a few high end optical applications, particularly for very powerful prisms, as well as for use as a substrate to grow other crystals on. Production is fairly scarce today and often what we can get is of very low quality, so much of what we get is from old stock. Some rutile is golden, some light yellow and it can very occasionally be a lighter blue or blue-yellow bicolor--all of them are absolutely stunning once cut.
This new honey rutile was actually grown specially for us--one of our partner growers used to produce smaller crystals of rutile and we convinced them to start back up and develop the process further, with us buying all the experimental crystals as they go. The crystals require a great deal of trimming and annealing but they are getting better and better!
