Another reason that it is so difficult to match, even if you have one and are trying to match it. There is such a range of colours, for example:

Rubilite - red-intense pink, the red being the most valuable

Verdelite - green of all shades, “emerald green” being the most valuable.

Indicolite – blue in all shades

 

These three colours are the most sort after, but you also get it in colourless and black, very rarely used in jewellery. There is an incredibly unusual yellow which I refer to as “petrol yellow”, lilac and then all the shades in between. Gems are sometimes cut with two or three colours in them, these are then referred to as watermelon tourmalines. Namibia is a very important source of tourmalines, the others being Brazil and the Far East. An interesting fact about tourmalines is that if you heat and cool down the crystal, and then apply pressure by rubbing them, they will become electrically charged strongly enough to attract dust particles or small pieces of paper. The Dutch who first imported tourmalines into Europe knew of this, and it was called “aschentrekker” –ash puller, and this was the name for tourmalines for a long time. Tourmalines can be heat”enhanced”, turning greens into “emerald green” and red-brown into fiery red. There are no synthetic tourmalines for commercial use, but because of the wide range of colours it can be confused with amethyst, demantoid garnet, peridot, ruby, emerald, citrine, smoky quartz and paste.