SIAMITE® Emerald Reflections

Emerald is a distinctly green gem quality variety of the beryl mineral family, which is traditionally associated with the birthday month of May and 55th anniversary. Emerald is one of the most desirable, rare and expensive gemstones and it has been the standard for green among coloured stones for thousands of years.

The trend of high demand, high cost, the lack of standard pricing and a limited supply of natural emeralds, has prompted a development of synthetic emeralds and the popularity of costume jewellery at low cost, which has encouraged the use of emerald imitations.

Hydrothermal synthetic emeralds and flux-grown synthetic emeralds share virtually all of the chemical, optical and physical characteristics of their natural counterparts, but lab-grown emeralds are relatively expensive compared to emerald imitations which only have a similar colour appearance, but are widely available and inexpensive, making it the only viable choice for costume jewellery.

Green glass, green cubic zirconia and green yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG), are manufactured specifically to serve as emerald substitutes, but generally lack hardness, density, refractive index, luster and heat resistance required for lost-wax casting, but more importantly, available in a limited colour range.

SIAMITE® glass-ceramic has been exclusively manufactured for the Formica group. An advanced nano glass-ceramic composite engineered to give the impression of similarity to natural gemstones, which is now available in a completely revised palette of natural emerald colours.

SIAMITE® is recognized for its unique physical and optical properties, such as close to zero thermal expansion and homogeneous composition.

This allows for even distribution of colour throughout the material, effectively eliminating common drawbacks of commonly used emerald imitations, such as colour zoning and excessively high refractive index.

Physical Properties of SIAMITE® Emerald Reflections

The 42-colour SIAMITE Emerald Reflections palette covers the most desirable Emerald colours, from slightly yellowish green, pure green and slightly bluish green to a bluish-green in a medium-dark tone with vivid colour saturation, evenly distributed colours and eye-visible colour zoning.

SIAMITE® Emerald Reflections is classified into groups that are each assigned a different hue from the color scheme to represent a range.

The size, shape and cut of a stone affects the transmitted light modifying the value of transparent SIAMITE®, as well as affecting the saturation of color. There is a need for multiple samples of each color in order to visualize how the color will look in a particular stone size and shape.

Color depends on the stone size, shape and cut. For example, the darkest types of emerald color of SIAMITE®: 1100-1101 in size less than 2 mm have medium/dark tone and vivid saturation, that is, they correspond to the most expensive colors of natural emerald. And, for example in 8x6 mm ovals or 10 mm round, these same stones have very dark tones and moderately strong saturation.

SIAMITE® Emerald Reflections can be used to create fantastic jewellery designs and fashion accessories, where you can add an immediate impact and wow factor with perfectly cut stones and matched colours. And while the Emerald Reflections palette features the most desirable emerald colours, the only real limit to what we can make is your imagination, since every piece of SIAMITE® glass-ceramic can actually be created in any size, shape, colour or design.