In 1890, Tom D. LaTouche, Deputy Director of the Geological Survey of India, wrote that the "Kashmir sapphire" was discovered almost by accident. He recalled meeting a man who told him the story.
In 1881, a landslide occurred in a harsh and remote rounded valley in the Zanskar Mountains. At an elevation of 13,000 feet, the landslide exposed a 100-foot-wide zone of pegmatite with blue crystals. This is the area where the Kashmir sapphire was found.
A hunter was at the site of the landslide looking for quartz fragments or other hard rocks to light his pipe, when all of a sudden he picked up a small sapphire and found it particularly handy for lighting his pipe. So he kept the stone for a while, but soon sold it to a trader in the area around Rahul. Local villagers began to bring more and more stones to trade for salt, bartering and weight for weight. Soon the sapphire reached the city of Shimla, where its value was discovered.
Kashmir Sapphire Mines Exposed by Landslides
By 1882, shipments of blue gems were arriving in Delhi, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and other parts of India. The ruler of Kashmir was very concerned about losing such extremely rare wealth and immediately ordered his army to guard the mines where the gems were being produced. But unfortunately, for most of the year, his men were unable to guard the gem-encrusted slopes. Because of the severe terrain, harsh weather, and sparse vegetation in the area, the job was very difficult, both in terms of patrolling and protection. He then ordered his troops to regularly search nearby villages to prevent villagers from digging for stones under the soldiers' noses.
From 1883 to 1887, during the warm summer months of the year, when the weather turned warmer and was not as harsh as winter, summer was the ideal time for those patrolling the mines around the area, the villagers, mining for stone and looking for other deposits. It was also, of course, a more convenient time for army patrols.
Scenes from summer mining
In 1887, the Kashmiri Durbar was colonized by the British under the leadership of a new king, Maharaja Sir Pratap Singh, who gave them the right to rule. The ruler ordered Tom D. LaTouche to investigate other deposits in the area in an attempt to find new sapphire output. But after several failures, his attempts to create new landslides in order to discover new deposits turned out to be a big disappointment.
To date, the original old deposits, known for producing a limited variety of high quality, large sized Kashmir sapphires, were completely exhausted in 1888.
While the story of discovery may have ended there, the allure of natural blue gems from Kashmir has only just been realized. During the early period of discovery, in 1882, a number of specimens were sent from the Shimla market to the Indian Museum for examination by Mr. Frederick Richard Mallet, a geologist of the Geological Survey of India. He recorded his observations in his article "On the recent discovery of sapphires in the north-western Himalaya". His experiments revealed and confirmed the mineralogical and chemical properties of the stone. Combined with legend and scarcity, his discovery sparked a great deal of interest in the natural, unheated blue sapphires from the Kashmir region. To this day, these Kashmir sapphires remain the rarest variety of sapphire in the world.
And the most precious of all Kashmir sapphires is the cornflower sapphire with its velvety appearance.
The cornflower blue of blue sapphires - that is, sapphires with a pure blue to violet-blue hue and a high degree of saturation. In addition, tiny inclusions give the sapphire a soft and velvety luster, making it even more unique and spectacular. This is why the cornflower blue color on blue sapphires is the most sought after. Sapphires of this cornflower color are currently found in Sri Lanka, Burma and Madagascar, but the most prized, still, are the cornflower sapphires from the Kashmir region.
10.45 carats Kashmir sapphire
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