The Sorsa Gemstone Guide: What We Use and Why It Matters
At Sorsa, the gemstone is never an afterthought. It's where each piece begins — the colour, the texture, the way it sits against the skin. We work almost entirely with natural stones, hand-selected for character rather than uniformity. No two are ever exactly the same, and that's entirely the point.
This is a guide to the stones we work with most. Not a crystal healing manual — there are plenty of those online. This is about what these gemstones actually are, where they come from, and what makes them worth wearing.
Aquamarine
Aquamarine is a variety of beryl — the same mineral family as emerald — and its colour ranges from a pale, almost transparent sky blue to a deeper blue-green, depending on where it was mined and how it was cut. The finest specimens come from Brazil, though significant deposits also exist in Nigeria, Madagascar and Pakistan.
The name comes from the Latin aqua marina — seawater — which tells you everything about the colour. It's a stone that feels inherently calm, which is probably why it has been worn by sailors and travellers for centuries. Practically speaking, it's also very durable, sitting at 7.5–8 on the Mohs hardness scale, which makes it well-suited to necklaces and pieces worn daily.
In a Sorsa piece, aquamarine tends to anchor a colour story. It works beautifully alongside white topaz, moonstone, and pale sapphire — anything in a cool, watery palette.
Amazonite
Amazonite is one of those stones that stops people mid-conversation. That particular shade of blue-green — slightly milky, striated with white — is unlike anything else. It belongs to the feldspar family, and despite its name, it was never actually found near the Amazon River. The name came from a 19th-century misidentification that stuck. The finest stones today come from Brazil, Colorado, Ethiopia and Madagascar.
It's a softer stone (6–6.5 on the Mohs scale), which is why it works best in pieces that aren't subject to heavy wear — necklaces being ideal. Ancient Egyptians used it extensively; a carved amazonite scarab ring was found among Tutankhamun's treasures.
The colour sits somewhere between turquoise and jade and reads differently depending on the light — cooler and more green in shade, more vivid in daylight.
Chalcedony
Chalcedony is a microcrystalline quartz and one of the most quietly beautiful stones in the gemstone world. It comes in a wide range of colours — soft grey-blue, pale lavender, white, mint green — and has a waxy, almost translucent quality that gives it a very different feel from faceted stones.
It's been used in jewellery since antiquity. Ancient Greeks and Romans carved cameos and intaglios from it; it was also prized across the Ottoman Empire and in Mughal India.
We're drawn to chalcedony for its subtlety. It doesn't announce itself — it adds softness and a kind of quiet confidence to a necklace. It layers particularly well with more saturated stones like ruby or chrysoprase, giving the eye somewhere to rest between colour.
Amethyst
Amethyst is a variety of quartz, and one of the most widely recognised gemstones in the world. Its colour ranges from a pale, almost lavender lilac to a deep, saturated violet-purple — the richest tones historically came from Siberia, though today the primary sources are Brazil and Uruguay, with significant deposits also in Zambia, which tends to produce a particularly vivid, slightly reddish purple.
The name comes from the ancient Greek amethystos, meaning "not drunk" — it was believed to protect the wearer from intoxication, which is why wine goblets were sometimes carved from it. More usefully, it's a very hard stone (7 on the Mohs scale) and holds up well in everyday jewellery.
We work with both purple amethyst and its green counterpart — see Green Amethyst below.
Chrysoprase
Chrysoprase is the most vibrant variety of chalcedony and arguably one of the most underrated gemstones in fine jewellery. Its colour — an intense apple green, almost neon in the best specimens — comes from trace amounts of nickel. The finest stones come from Queensland, Australia, though deposits also exist in Poland, Tanzania and Brazil.
It has a long history. Alexander the Great is said to have worn it into battle. In medieval Europe it was carved into seals and used in church decoration. Today it remains less well-known than it deserves to be, which is part of the appeal.
In a Sorsa necklace, chrysoprase is a statement. Paired with gold, it has a lushness that feels genuinely luxurious without being showy.
Emerald
Emerald is a variety of beryl — the same family as aquamarine — coloured by chromium and sometimes vanadium. The colour range runs from a bright, slightly yellowish green to a deep, velvety forest green, and the most prized stones come from Colombia, where the combination of chromium and vanadium produces a particular richness and warmth unlike emeralds from any other source. Zambia and Brazil are also significant producers.
Emerald is one of the four precious gemstones alongside ruby, sapphire and diamond, and has been treasured since antiquity. Cleopatra was famously devoted to them; the Mughal emperors had emeralds engraved with sacred texts and worn as talismans.
Unlike many precious stones, emerald is almost always included — the internal fractures and inclusions are so characteristic that the French term jardin (garden) is used to describe them. A completely clean emerald is rarer than a flawless diamond. We use emerald selectively, in pieces where the depth of colour justifies the stone's place in the design.
Fluorite
Fluorite is one of the most colour-variable minerals on earth — it can be purple, green, blue, yellow, pink, or all of those at once in a single stone. The banded, multi-tonal variety is particularly beautiful and gives each bead or cabochon a completely individual character.
It's a relatively soft stone (4 on the Mohs scale), which limits some of its jewellery applications, but in a knotted necklace it works well — the silk provides cushioning and the stones aren't subject to the kind of impact that would chip them.
Fluorite was historically called fluorospar and was used in smelting before its gemstone potential was widely recognised. The word "fluorescence" actually derives from fluorite — it was one of the first minerals observed to fluoresce under ultraviolet light.
Green Amethyst (Prasiolite)
Green amethyst — properly called prasiolite — is a pale, mint-to-sage green variety of quartz. Most prasiolite on the market is produced by heat-treating purple amethyst, which causes the colour to shift to green. Natural prasiolite exists but is exceptionally rare; the primary natural deposit is in Brazil.
The colour is subtle and cool — not the vivid green of chrysoprase or emerald, but something quieter and more watery. It works particularly well in layered pieces where you want green without intensity, or as a bridge between warmer and cooler tones in a multi-stone necklace.
Larimar
Larimar is rare — genuinely, geographically rare. It is found in only one place in the world: a single mountain in the Barahona province of the Dominican Republic. The mine is small, access is difficult, and supply is limited. That rarity is reflected in the price of quality stones.
The colour is extraordinary: a pale, cloudy blue patterned with white, sometimes with hints of green. It looks like sky and sea compressed into stone, which is why it's sometimes called the "Atlantis stone" or the "dolphin stone." The patterns within each stone are completely unique — no two pieces of larimar are ever the same.
In jewellery, larimar is best set simply. The stone is the point. It pairs naturally with gold and with other soft blues and whites, and has a calming, almost meditative presence when worn.
Moonstone
Moonstone is a feldspar mineral prized for its adularescence — the optical phenomenon that creates a glowing, billowing light beneath the surface of the stone, as though lit from within. The effect shifts as the stone moves, which is what gives moonstone its otherworldly quality.
It comes in several varieties. Rainbow moonstone (technically a variety of labradorite) displays flashes of blue and occasionally other colours against a pale background. Peach moonstone has a warmer, peachy base tone with a softer glow. White moonstone is the classic — cool, clean, luminous.
India, Sri Lanka and Madagascar are the primary sources. The finest rainbow moonstones come from Sri Lanka, where the blue flash can be intense and deeply saturated.
We use moonstone across several collections. It's one of those stones that photographs beautifully but is even better in person — the adularescence only really reads when you're wearing it and moving through light.
Opal
Opal is in a category of its own. Where other gemstones reflect light, opal diffracts it — breaking white light into its spectral colours and displaying them as a shifting, internal play of colour known as opalescence. The effect is different in every stone and changes entirely depending on the angle and quality of light.
We work with several varieties:
Ethiopian Opal — typically honey-coloured to orange in body tone, with an intense, often fiery play of colour. Found in the Wollo province of Ethiopia since around 2008, these are some of the most vivid opals available.
White Opal — pale, milky body with a softer colour play. More restrained than Ethiopian, but with a coolness and elegance that works well in layered pieces.
Fire Opal — warm orange-red in body colour, usually from Mexico. The colour play can be electric, or the stone can be worn for the warmth of its body colour alone.
Peruvian Opal — not technically a play-of-colour opal. It's a solid, opaque stone in a beautiful pale blue-green, mined in the Andes. It has a completely different character from the others — quieter, more grounded — and works beautifully in layered necklaces.
Opal is a stone we choose deliberately and carefully. Its fragility requires thoughtful setting and care from the wearer, but there is nothing else quite like it.
Onyx
Onyx is a banded variety of chalcedony, most commonly seen in its black form — though it also occurs in white, red, brown and banded combinations. Black onyx is almost always dyed or treated to achieve its deep, uniform colour, which is standard practice across the industry and doesn't affect the stone's durability or appearance.
As a design element, black onyx is one of the most useful stones in a jeweller's vocabulary. It provides contrast, grounds a palette, and pairs cleanly with gold in a way that feels graphic and deliberate. In a multi-stone necklace it acts as punctuation — a visual pause between colour.
Peridot
Peridot is one of the few gemstones that forms in only one colour: green. The range is narrow — from a bright, slightly yellowish lime green to a deeper, more olive tone — determined entirely by the iron content of the stone. There is no blue peridot, no red peridot. What you see is what it is.
It's also one of the few gemstones formed not in the earth's crust but in the mantle, brought to the surface by volcanic activity. Some peridot has even been found in meteorites. The finest stones today come from Pakistan, where the colour can be particularly vivid and saturated.
Peridot has a brightness and immediacy that makes it a natural choice for summer pieces — it catches light easily and has an almost luminous quality in daylight.
Ruby
Ruby is the red variety of corundum — the same mineral as sapphire — and the chromium that gives it its colour also makes it fluoresce, which is why a good ruby seems to glow from within in natural daylight.
We work with natural rubies. The colour varies between stones — from a brighter, slightly pinkish red to a deeper, more saturated crimson — and that variation is part of what makes them interesting. The finest rubies historically came from the Mogok Valley in Myanmar, where the most prized shade, known as "pigeon's blood," is found. Mozambique, Thailand and Sri Lanka also produce significant stones with their own distinct character.
Ruby is one of the hardest gemstones (9 on the Mohs scale, second only to diamond), which makes it extremely well-suited to jewellery worn daily. It's also one of the most historically significant gemstones in the world — prized across almost every culture that encountered it, from ancient India to medieval Europe.
Sapphire
Most people think of sapphire as blue — deep, velvety, midnight blue. And the finest blue sapphires, from Kashmir and Sri Lanka, are among the most valuable coloured gemstones in the world. But sapphire is actually corundum in any colour except red (which becomes ruby), and the range is extraordinary: pale pink, warm peach, vivid yellow, orange, violet, teal, white.
We work with sapphire in both its classic blue form and in more unusual hues — the lighter, more watery blues, and occasionally the warm peach and pink tones that sit beautifully in a multi-stone necklace.
Like ruby, sapphire is extremely hard and durable. It's a stone with genuine longevity, which matters in pieces designed to be worn and kept.
Spinel
Spinel is one of the most underappreciated gemstones in fine jewellery, and that's largely a historical accident. For centuries, some of the most famous "rubies" in the world — including stones in the British Crown Jewels — turned out to be spinel. The two were indistinguishable to the naked eye until modern gemology, and spinel still suffers from being thought of as a ruby substitute rather than a remarkable stone in its own right.
It comes in a wide range of colours: vivid red, hot pink, orange, lavender, blue, and a near-black that is among the deepest colours in the gemstone world. The finest red and pink spinels come from Myanmar and Tanzania. It's extremely hard (8 on the Mohs scale), highly brilliant, and in our view significantly undervalued relative to its beauty.
Topaz
Topaz is one of the most colour-versatile stones in fine jewellery. In its natural state it is usually colourless, pale yellow, or a warm golden orange. The most prized natural colour is "Imperial Topaz" — a rich golden orange with pink undertones, found primarily in Brazil.
Blue topaz — ranging from the pale sky blue of "sky blue" to the deep, vivid "London blue" — is almost always the result of irradiation treatment, which is standard and stable across the industry. The treatment is permanent and does not affect the stone's appearance over time.
We use topaz in several colour temperatures: cooler blues to complement aquamarine and moonstone palettes, and warmer champagne and golden tones in more autumnal pieces. It's a generous stone — bright, clear, and easy to wear.
Tourmaline
Tourmaline has the widest colour range of any gemstone. A single crystal can contain multiple colours simultaneously — the classic "watermelon tourmaline" is pink at the core and green at the edges, sliced in cross-section to reveal a pattern that looks exactly like its name. Beyond that, tourmaline comes in every colour imaginable: deep chrome green, vivid Paraíba blue-green, hot pink, red, orange, yellow, black, and everything in between.
The finest Paraíba tourmalines — neon blue-green, coloured by copper — are among the most valuable coloured gemstones per carat in the world. But tourmaline is also remarkably accessible at the other end of the spectrum, making it one of the most versatile stones to work with across different price points.
We use tourmaline in its various colour forms depending on the palette of a given piece. It's a stone that rewards close looking — there's almost always more going on within it than you first notice.
How We Choose Our Stones
Every gemstone used in a Sorsa necklace is individually selected. We don't work from a uniform batch — the variation in colour, translucency and texture between stones is something we actively seek out, because it's what gives each piece its own identity.
We source our stones through our production partner in Bangkok, where access to a wide range of natural gemstones is exceptional. All stones are natural unless otherwise stated.