We travelled to Jaipur in April to meet the dealers and cutters who handle the Kashmir sapphires we use in our commissions. It is a journey we make every two years. Every time, we come back thinking differently about colour.
Why Kashmir
Kashmir sapphires are the most coveted coloured stones in the world, and have been since their discovery in the 1880s. The mines — located at altitude in the Zanskar range — were largely exhausted by the 1930s. What exists now is a finite and diminishing supply of antique and estate stones, traded and retraded through dealers who have spent lifetimes learning to distinguish the genuine article from its very convincing substitutes.
The colour is described as cornflower blue — but that description undersells it. The quality that makes Kashmir sapphires exceptional is not simply the hue but the way the colour is distributed within the stone, and a phenomenon called silk: microscopic rutile needles that scatter light internally and give the stone a velvety, almost liquid quality that no other sapphire origin reliably produces.
What We Learned This Time
We spent three days looking at stones with a dealer whose family has been in the trade for four generations. He showed us stones we could afford and stones we could not, which is the most efficient education available. The stones we could not afford taught us what we were actually looking for. The stones we could afford taught us what compromises were acceptable and which were not.
We came back with two stones. Both will become commissions this year. We will not say more than that — our clients' pieces are their own — but we are very pleased with what we found.
On Buying in Person
It is not possible to buy a sapphire properly from a photograph or a video. Colour in gemstones is not a fixed property — it shifts with the light source, the viewing angle, and the setting that surrounds the stone. A stone that looks extraordinary in Jaipur daylight may be flat under London office lighting. You have to see them in multiple conditions over multiple hours to know what you are actually buying. There is no shortcut to this, and we do not pretend otherwise.