Emerald: Taking a Closer Look at the May Birthstone, Flaws and All

Yep.  Emerald is the birthstone for the month of May and I’m jealous.  While I languish in my birth month (December) trying get excited over my semiprecious birthstones, those of you blessed with May birthdays have one of the prettiest gemstones around to represent you.

Emerald is a highly included gemstone, which simply means it’s formed with tiny little internal fissures and flaws, sometimes called jardin (after the French word for garden).  These little fissures mean emerald is prone to chipping and cracking and should be worn with care.  For those of you who get excited by facts and figures, emerald is classified as a Type 3 gemstone by the Gemological Institute of America, meaning it’s a gemstone that almost always has inclusions present.

This bit of information is important when it’s time to choose your emerald jewelry.  If you’re envisioning a decently sized heart shaped emerald ring, for example (Gee, wonder where I got the idea for that??), in a pure, untreated emerald green, you can probably forget it.  Inclusions are a characteristic of both natural emeralds and lab-created/synthetic gemstones (lab-created and synthetic gemstones have same chemical and physical properties as natural gemstones – both good and bad).  And the bigger the emerald, the greater the number of inclusions.  That’s why small sized untreated emeralds with decent clarity are easier to come by than their larger brothers.  To be fair, it should be pointed out that lab-created emeralds are generally far less included than their natural counterparts and it’s both easier and more affordable to find a larger lab-created emerald than it is a natural one.

What I’m trying to get at is this:  Nearly all natural emeralds out there in the jewelry world have undergone some type of clarity enhancement treatment.  An untreated emerald is a visibly flawed emerald and a visibly flawed emerald is a cloudy-looking gemstone.  Clarity enhancement of natural emerald jewelry is acknowledged and accepted by the jewelry industry so please don’t think less of your emerald jewelry if it’s been clarity enhanced.