On The Fly

Photo's Robert & Orasa Weldon In the world of gemstones, people desire rarity and beauty. There is no better  way to achieve both of these goals than with nature’s treasure, a fine spinel. Once distinguished as history’s most under appreciated gemstone, spinel’s eminence is rising meteorically. Spinel is a magnesium aluminum oxide occurring as octahedral crystals in a wide range of colors: red, orange, purple, pink, blue and black. Red spinels range from pure red to a purplish-red, not unlike the color of ruby, a gem with which it was sometimes confused. Today, collectors praise it’s rarity and pay enormous prices to obtain it.. The earliest known use of a spinel gemstone was in 100 BC, as an ornament on a Buddhist tomb in Afghanistan. It is believed that the first known systematic mining of spinel was in Afghanistan, around 750 AD. Some 500 years later, the Venetian merchant, Marco Polo, was to travel through the region, likely filling his pockets with the red g...