According to the legend, the Black Orlov is said to have taken its name from the
Russian Princess Nadia Vyegin-Orlov who owned it for time during the mid-eighteenth century.

It is a 67.50-carat cushion-cut stone, a so-called black diamond (actually, a very dark gun-metal color).
It is reported to have belonged to a nineteenth-century shrine near Pondicherry, India, and to have weighed 195 carats in the rough.
Unfortunately the Indian origin of this stone is almost certainly false.
There is no documentation of Russia having had a princess by that name, or of
India having produced any black diamonds of note.

Considered to be the most celebrated diamond in the Iranian Crown Jewels and one
of the oldest known to man, the 186-carat Darya-i-Nur is a crudely fashioned stone
measuring 41.40 × 29.50 × 12.15 mm. The name means Sea of Light, River of Light,
or Ocean of Light. It is a table or 'taviz' cut diamond.

The William Goldberg Diamond Corporation, famous for outstanding stones like the
Premier Rose and the Guinea Star, cut this gem from a 13.90-carat rough. They
transformed the piece into a spectacular red diamond weighing 5.11 carats. The GIA
states, "It is the largest Fancy Red, natural color diamond that we have graded as
of the date the report was issued." The stone is a triangular brilliant, sometimes
refered to as a trillion or a trilliant cut.

The Golden Jubilee got his name when it was presented to the King of Thailand in
1997 for his Golden Jubilee, the 50th anniversary of his coronation. Before this
event it was simply Unnamed Brown. The rough stone was discovered in Premier mine
of South Africa and weighed 755 carats.

After its discovery in 1985, The Golden Jubilee was cut and became the largest
faceted diamond in the world. Stunningly beautiful it has the weight of 545.67
carats and an estimated value of $4-$12 million.

His color was determined to be “fancy yellow-brown” and diamond cutter Marcel
Tolkowsky, the “father of the modern round brilliant diamond cut”, said that The
Golden Jubilee has a “fire rose cushion cut.”

Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock.
It is produced when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools without crystal growth.
Obsidian is commonly found within the margins of rhyolitic lava flows known as obsidian flows,
where the chemical composition (high silica content) induces a high viscosity and polymerization degree of the lava.
The inhibition of atomic diffusion through this highly viscous and polymerized
lava explains the lack of crystal growth. Because of this lack of crystal structure,
obsidian blade edges can reach almost molecular thinness, leading to its ancient
use as projectile points, and its modern use as surgical scalpel blades.

Diamond's hardness and high dispersion of light – giving the diamond its
characteristic "fire" – make it useful for industrial applications and desirable as jewelry.
Diamonds are such a highly traded commodity that multiple organizations have been
created for grading and certifying them based on the four Cs, which are carat, cut,
color, and clarity. Other characteristics, such as shape and presence or lack of fluorescence,
also affect the desirability and thus the value of a diamond used for jewelry.

The name "Blue Heart" seems to have been inspired by the rare deep blue color of the diamond and it's extraordinarily beautiful heart-shaped cut, that makes it perhaps the world's prettiest blue diamond. The "Blue Heart" diamond is sometimes known as the "Unzue" diamond, after the Argentinean woman Mrs. Unzue who owned the diamond for 43 years, having purchased it from Cartier's in 1910, two years after it's discovery. The diamond is also mistakenly referred to as the "Eugenie Blue," after Empress Eugenie of France, the empress consort of Napoleon III (1852-1870), but she could never have owned this diamond because it was discovered only in 1908.

Sapphire is a gemstone variety of the mineral corundum, an aluminium oxide,
when it is a color other than red, in which case the gem would instead be a ruby.
Trace amounts of other elements such as iron, titanium, or chromium can give corundum blue,
yellow, pink, purple, orange, or greenish color. Pink-orange corundum are also sapphires,
but are instead called padparadscha.

Because it is a gemstone, sapphire is commonly worn as jewelry.
Sapphire can be found naturally, or manufactured in large crystal boules.
Because of its remarkable hardness, sapphire is used in many applications,
including infrared optical components, watch crystals, high-durability windows,
and wafers for the deposition of thin films of various semiconductors.

Emeralds are a variety of the mineral beryl colored green by trace amounts of
chromium and sometimes vanadium. Beryl has a hardness of 7.5–8 on the 10 point
Mohs scale of mineral hardness. Most emeralds are highly included, so their
toughness (resistance to breakage) is classified as generally poor.

Aquamarine (from Lat. aqua marina, "water of the sea") is a blue or turquoise variety of beryl.
It occurs at most localities which yield ordinary beryl, some of the finest coming from Russia.
The gem-gravel placer deposits of Sri Lanka contain aquamarine. Clear yellow beryl,
such as occurs in Brazil, is sometimes called aquamarine chrysolite.
When corundum presents the bluish tint of typical aquamarine, it is often termed Oriental aquamarine.
The deep blue version of aquamarine is called maxixe.

Its color fades to white when exposed to sunlight or is subjected to heat treatment, though the color returns with irradiation.

Amber (or, technically, resinite) is fossilized tree resin (not sap),
which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times.
Good quality amber is used for the manufacture of ornamental objects and jewelry.
There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents.

Because it originates as a soft, sticky tree resin, amber sometimes includes
animal and plant material as inclusions.

A pearl is a hard, generally spherical object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle)
of a living shelled mollusk. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is made up of calcium carbonate
in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers.

The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth, but many other shapes of pearls (baroque pearls) occur.
The finest quality natural pearls have been highly valued as gemstones and objects of beauty
for many centuries, and because of this, the word pearl has become a metaphor for
something very rare, fine, admirable, and valuable.

Opal is a mineraloid gel which is deposited at a relatively low temperature and
may occur in the fissures of almost any kind of rock, being most commonly found
with limonite, sandstone, rhyolite, marl and basalt. The word opal comes from the Latin opalus.

The water content is usually between three and ten percent, but can be as high as twenty percent.
Opal ranges from clear through white, gray, red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
magenta, rose, pink, slate, olive, brown, and black.
Of these hues, the reds against black are the most rare, whereas white and greens are the most common.
These color variations are a function of growth size into the red and infrared wavelengths.

Opal is Australia's national gemstone.

Turquoise is an opaque, blue-to-green mineral that is a hydrous phosphate of copper and aluminium.
It is rare and valuable in finer grades and has been prized as a gem and ornamental
stone for thousands of years owing to its unique hue.
In recent times turquoise, like most other opaque gems, has been devalued by the
introduction of treatments, imitations, and synthetics onto the market.

The substance has been known by many names, but the word turquoise was derived
around the 16th century from the French language turquie, for Central Asian
material which was early imported through Turkey.