Padparadscha

Padparadscha is a sapphire showing a delicate blend of pink and orange, with neither colour winning. The name comes from the Sinhalese word for the lotus blossom, and the stone is historically Sri Lankan, from the gravels around Ratnapura and Elahera, though Madagascar has produced material that several laboratories will call by the name. It is the most expensive fancy sapphire by a distance, and the word does the pricing. Lean too far to pink and it is a pink sapphire; too far to orange and it is an orange sapphire, at a fraction of the money.

On a lab report

Laboratories apply written colour boundaries before they will print the word, and the boundaries differ between houses. A padparadscha at one laboratory may come back from another as "pinkish orange sapphire", which is the same stone at a very different price. GIA, Gübelin, SSEF, AIGS and GRS each keep their own range, and the trade knows which are stricter. Some stones in this colour range are also unstable. Strong light drains the orange and leaves pink, and time in the dark can bring it back. Leading laboratories now test for this and note colour stability on the report, or decline the term where the colour fades. Beryllium diffusion can imitate the colour perfectly, so the treatment line matters as much as the colour line.

Buy the report, not the adjective. Insist that padparadscha appears in full on a current report from a laboratory whose number can be checked online, not only on the invoice or in a listing headed pad colour. Ask whether colour stability was tested. Then look at the stone in daylight, where the balance of pink and orange either holds or it does not, and where a stone that was all orange under the shop lamp sometimes turns out to be mostly pink.