A Decade of Ruby from Mozambique: A Review

Geographic Origin Determination of Ruby

“…In the following section we will describe typical inclusion scenes for the major high-iron ruby deposits. Additional information can be obtained from the following references (Schwarz and Schmetzer, 2001;Gübelin and Koivula, 2008;Pardieu et al, 2012;Hughes et al, 2015Hughes et al, , 2017Vertriest and Saeseaw, 2019).…”

“…Never before had such vast quantities of high-quality ruby (figure 42) been so freely available to the gem and jewelry industry. This could have resulted in a significant problem for the gemological laboratories had the Mozambique ruby not been fairly straightforward to identify (Vertriest and Saeseaw, 2019). In many cases, a Mozambique origin can be concluded based on observations of inclusion scenes, but additional evidence is always sought in the form of trace element chemistry, which almost always closes the case (see the "High-Iron Ruby Trace Element Chemistry" section below).…”

Identification of Opaque Sulfide Inclusions in Rubies From Mogok, Myanmar and Montepuez, Mozambique

“…Mogok, Myanmar is the most coveted ruby source in the world, due to its long history and the fabled gemstones that were sourced from its mines [1]. Montepuez Mozambique on the other hand is a very new source where rubies were only discovered in 2009, but its large volumes and high quality quickly made it the dominant supplier for the global ruby trade [2].…”

“…Historically, the finest rubies were found in deposits throughout Central and South-East Asia [1]. In the last decades, many ruby deposits have been found in East Africa, introducing a slightly different type of ruby to the market that originated from geologically different deposits [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…On top of that, they react poorly to heat treatment [2,17,18]. Heating rubies is a standard practice in the gem trade to improve the color or clarity of the gemstone.…”