From the ground up
Most gemstones reach you with no history at all. Ours arrive with an episode number.
It starts in the dirt
Every stone we sell was dug by hand on the Queensland gemfields, most of it around Rubyvale in Central Queensland — an outback town about 50 km north-west of Emerald, sitting on top of one of the richest sapphire fields in the world.
Hand-dug means exactly that. Wash, sieve, sort. One bucket at a time. Most of what comes up is gravel, and you do it again tomorrow. Every so often something in the sieve stops you dead.
Then it goes on the wheel
We cut in-house, here in Australia. Nothing is sent offshore and nothing is cut by someone who has never seen where it came from.
Cutting is where a stone is won or lost. The same piece of rough can come off the wheel as a dull, windowed stone or as something that throws colour across a room, and the difference is entirely in the hands of whoever sits at it. Cutting for brilliance usually means giving up weight — a heavier stone is worth more on paper, but a better-cut lighter one is worth more on a hand. We cut for the hand.
You can watch the whole thing
This is the part nobody else in the trade can offer. There are 126 episodes on our channel showing stones coming out of the ground and going onto the wheel — including, in many cases, the exact stone you are looking at.
You do not have to take our word for where a stone came from. You can watch it happen.
Then you design the ring around it
Once you have chosen a stone, the Gem Design Studio lets you see it set in your choice of style and metal before you commit to anything. Concepts come back within 24 hours, and there is no cost and no obligation.