With the turn of the new year just around the corner, Pantone has released its choice on 2019's color of the year. Quoting their own words, "vibrant, yet mellow" PANTONE 16-1546 was selected in response to "the onslaught of digital technology and social media increasingly embedding into daily life". The company was looking for something that could symbolize lightheartedness and intimacy.
Living Coral, the vivid name for this shade, speaks of a subtle and demure wonder, expressing exactly what the company thinks humanity needs in this day and age. Coral, a living creature is also a very famous gemstone here in the Philippines, but unfortunately is often collected by unsavory means, and also dyed with artificial reddish colors.
While here at Gemcamp we do not examine coral as part of our services, we have seen some other gemstone varieties that may tickle your palette in style for this year's color of the year. Peach and pinks never go out of season, but the spectrum often leans from one side to the other, depending on the specific gemstone species.
Morganite is a beautiful pastel colored peach gemstone, whose hue we can expect to see gaining popularity this coming year. Many collectors of this light-tones stone, are familiar with its relation to emerald and aquamarine as a fellow member of the beryl species. Morganite was named after J.P. Morgan, who was himself an avid collector of fine and exotic gemstones.
Padparadscha sapphire's orange-pink color is also a perfect match for this pantone selection. Named after the Sinhalese term for lotus-flower, this variety of sapphire can often times out-value the traditional blue variants, even in top tier qualities.
Leaning towards the pink side of the spectrum, some people forecast that pink sapphire and rubellite tourmaline may also rise in market reception. Fashion forward design houses may most likely incorporate these two gemstones into their lineup of outfit styles and swatches. Both stones are very popular in most country-based trading markets today.
Let's not forget about pink and orange diamonds either. Fancy colored diamonds have always been considered as fine, top level gemstones (when naturally colored), but recently smaller pink diamonds have also made their way into middle market jewelry designs. The movement for natural, inclusion-visible, earth-mined diamonds in contrast to eye-clean man-made stones, is also contributing to the growing demand for all quality tiers of pink diamond.
With this year coming to an end, our team is preparing for a short tour (December 21 to January 3) to Seoul (Korea) and Tokyo (Japan). It seems that even in other asian countries, there is a widespread concern over the dilution of lab-grown diamonds into retail diamond jewelry.
