Lab Aquamarine Facet Rough, Hydrothermal Aqua Crystals

These are unusual lab created aquamarine facet rough.

Some pieces of rough have flaws like minor cracks and inclusions.  The color is a light blue with a slight purplish cast down the C axis.  I believe these aquamarines may be colored primarily by a trace of copper rather than iron as in natural aquamarine but I am not certain.

Lab aquamarine is very rare and unusual, since it is expensive to grow and natural aquamarine is abundant.  I suspect this crystal was grown by accident with a lower dopant level than intended--it was likely meant to be a richer purple color.  Still, their loss is our gain with these beautiful and unusual gem.  The color is a bit less intense than screens tend to show, and some have remnants of the emerald seed plate giving a greener cast that will cut out leaving only the pale blue.

Beryl is one of the most classic gem families but it turns out it is rather difficult to grow in the lab.  It can't be made by flame fusion or pulling methods, leaving the flux (slow and expensive and poisonous) and hydrothermal (slow and expensive and potentially explosive) methods.  Still, it compensates for that with its incredible range of colors, providing the gems emerald, morganite, aquamarine, heliodor and red beryl.

This one is a bit unusual for us since it wasn't grown for science--these are old vintage crystals that were grown in Russia for gem usage.  However, I will note that occasionally lasers are made using an emerald crystal rod.  The papers always have justifications about it being a good crystal matrix to hold chromium--but I suspect it has more to do with scientists proving that they can.