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Article: WHITE TOPAZ: The New Vanilla.(Gem Profile)
- Article from:
- Modern Jeweler
- Article date:
- February 1, 2007
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Cygnus Business Media. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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WHITE TOPAZ: The New Vanilla
BY DAVID FEDERMAN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Topaz is a gem that has spent most of the last 30 years being everything but itself.
Tons of this material have been converted, via irradiation and heat, into the world's most affordable and abundant blue gem. More recently, the gem has served as a substrate for thin-film coatings in a multitude of colors. Now it is the recipient of baked-on hues as treaters apply diffusion-chemistry methods developed with corundum to produce rinds of a surprising number of colors.
In short, topaz has become the ultimate stand-in: a gem with a thousand faces, none of them its own. Most ...