Honey yellow. Fiery orange. Cyclamen pink. Icy blue. In warm or cool tones, topaz is a lustrous and brilliant gem.
Colorless topaz treated to blue is a mass-market gem. Fine pink-to-red, purple, or orange gems are one-of-a-kind pieces. Top sources include Villa Rica, Brazil, and Russia's Ural Mountains.
Topaz actually has an exceptionally wide color range that, besides brown, includes various tones and saturations of blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, and purple. Colorless topaz is plentiful, and is often treated to give it a blue color. Topaz is also pleochroic, meaning that the gem can show different colors in different crystal directions.
Irradiating colorless topaz with electrons at energy of 10 million electron volts creates a sky blue color.
The royal court in Portugal celebrates the discovery of Imperial topaz in 1768.
A transparent topaz crystal discovered in Minas Gerais, Brazil weighs an astounding 596 pounds.
The most valued topaz colors are orangy red to red. Blue gems are widely available.
Topaz usually does not have inclusions that can be seen by the naked eye.
Topaz crystals are usually columnar, and cut as oval or pear shapes to improve yield.
Topaz can often form as large crystals. These can yield sizeable cut gems.