Road I
Ceylon, in my own hands.
Sapphire, spinel, garnet, chrysoberyl, moonstone: what the island itself produces. Bought on site, in the back rooms where professionals actually show parcels.
Most of the catalogueHow I source
I don't own a mine.
In Sri Lanka, no foreigner is allowed to own one.Me included.
So I do the only honest thing left: I go, I sit at the table, and I buy the stone with my own eyes.
See the stonesThe short chain
The usual route.My route.
From the pit to you: seven to ten hands.I buy at the market, one or two hands from the ground.
Two hands.
Not ten.
A stone leaves the pit and is bought by one person. Sometimes that person sells it on once more. That is where I buy, one to two hands from the ground.
Where they come from
Three roads, each named for what it is.
Road II
African rough, cut in Ceylon.
Rough from East Africa, cut on the island by the cutters I work with.
Never sold as Ceylon
Road III
What the island doesn't have.
Emerald, pearl and more: the island doesn't produce them, and I won't pretend to find them there. They come from partners who do only that.
Partner-sourced, namedThree roads.Then your hands.
The country does half the work
A gem pit here needs a licence. A machine needs a rarer one.
01 · The licence
Every legal pit
carries a licence.
Around 6,500 a year, more than 6,000 of them dug by hand.
In the 2013 figures, around 6,500 licences were issued in a year, more than 6,000 of them for pits dug by hand. No licence, no parcel a dealer can legally show you.
Sri Lanka Export Development Board · figures for 201302 · The foreigner
No foreigner
may hold a licence.
I can go down into one. I can't own it.
Not a foreign company, not a foreign partner, not me. Sixteen such licences were cancelled in 2015. It is the plainest answer to why I buy at the market instead of claiming a mine.
Daily FT · 201503 · The machines
Machines are
the rare exception.
About ten mechanised permits that same year.
About ten mechanised permits, that same year. What is left is a timber shaft, a rope, a bucket and a small pump. Slow, shallow, and deliberately so.
Sri Lanka Export Development Board · figures for 201304 · The age
Underground,
never before sixteen.
The Mines and Minerals Law No. 4 of 1973 says so, and Sri Lanka has ratified both ILO conventions that govern it: 138 on minimum age, 182 on the worst forms of child labour.
US Department of Labor · Worst Forms of Child Labour, Sri Lanka (2022)05 · The ground
The hole goes back
where it came from.
Rehabilitation is written into the licence itself.
Shafts and open pits must be filled once mining ends. Rehabilitation sits in the licence itself, not in goodwill. The land is replanted before the paperwork closes.
National Gem and Jewellery Authority, via the Export Development BoardIII · The cutting
Weightis billed.Light isn't.
Weight
1,27ct
Cut for
weightlight
Most buyers ask for weight, because weight is what gets billed. I ask for light. And I pay the difference.
IV · The check
At first,
I saw blue.
There was
violet in it.
Now,
you can see it.
Before you go
There are things a photograph cannot carry: the colour changes when the stone moves, and you have to see it move.
Come and see a stone.
Two sapphires, on the same paper. Look closely.
The gap is exaggerated here. At the market it is a few degrees, and it is the whole price of the stone.
You don't learn this from a book. I went back to the market every day, until that violet stopped being invisible. Then every stone goes to an independent laboratory, and its treatment is stated before its price.