WHITE TOPAZ: The New Vanilla Bell CA

Topaz is a gem that has spent most of the last 30 years being everything but itself.

Tons of this material have been converted, via irradiation and heat, into the world's most affordable and abundant blue gem. More recently, the gem has served as a substrate for thin-film coatings in a multitude of colors. Now it is the recipient of baked-on hues as treaters apply diffusion-chemistry methods developed with corundum to produce rinds of a surprising number of colors.

In short, topaz has become the ultimate stand-in: a gem with a thousand faces, none of them its own. Most consumers today have never even seen precious topaz, the natural and valuable yellow to pink gem that once was its only gem form.

That is what makes the sudden popularity of all-natural colorless topaz such an unexpected and welcome event.

HAPPY ACCIDENTS

Curiously, the rediscovery of topaz as a gem in its own right seems to have been an accident, but an accident waiting to happen.

Philadelphia designer Steven Lagos is one of the first to have fallen in love with white topaz, "purely by chance," he adds. Ten or so years ago, while in his shipping room, he saw a parcel of untreated topaz received by mistake that was being readied for a return to sender. "Something about the material caught my eye," he recalls. "'Hey, wait a moment,' I said. 'This stuff looks great. Let's play with it.'"

Play quickly turned serious as Lagos realized the gem's peerless potential compared to short-supply white sapphire (some of it synthetic) and rock crystal quartz. Today, Lagos is perhaps the world's most ardent advocate of white topaz, credited by many with being the leader in its revival. No wonder it is, and has been for the past few years, the most popular gem in his collections.

Now other major movers in silver jewelry like John Hardy are likewise big users and advocates. "White gems never go out of fashion," Lagos says. "Except for far more expensive diamond, topaz is the best colorless gem I have found."

The story is similar at Signity Gems based in Austin, Texas. Although nowhere near as big a seller for this firm as cubic zirconia, the company is starting to note a surge in demand for colorless topaz melee cut with the company's signature precision. "White topaz is now a definite blip on our radar screen," says Jack Malinowski, who predicts staple status for the stone.

Cross country at The Gem Vault in Flemington, New Jersey, designer and lapidary Jason Baskin has fellow retailers commissioning him to cut white topaz behemoths as large as 160 carats. "It's a lot of center stone for little money," he says. "How else can you afford to give knockout elegance in Gibraltar sizes?"

But it isn't just size and price that are working in white topaz's favor. It's availability and lots of gemological virtues.

THE OTHER ICE

White topaz has never been in short supply since the first flood of irradiated blue goods in the 1970s. Then, the main sources were Sri Lanka and Brazil. More recently, Nigeria has become the number one supplier with Brazil a strong second.

However, quantity isn't enough to explain the takeoff of white topaz. According to Bushpendra Mookim at SPB Creations in New York, the gem's hardness of 8 allows it to take an exceptional polish that gives it extra pop and luster. This may explain why white topaz has been such a screen darling with home shopping vendors.

"It just looks so much better than rock crystal," Mookim says, "which makes it worth the extra money that must be charged for it."

Of course, sapphire is even harder, but much of the colorless material is lab-grown and retailers can't be absolutely sure which they're getting unless they send stones for expensive lab identification. Since there isn't any commercially available synthetic topaz, jewelers can sell this gem in unpedigreed form with the highest confidence. How ironic it is that the world's most popular treated gem is now gaining a reputation as a reliable all-natural one.

Eric Braunwart of Columbia Gem House, Vancouver, Washington, relishes the situation. "White topaz provides the ideal inexpensive neutral-color natural gem," he says. "Sooner or later, the industry was bound to discover a great white gem hidden by all that artificial coloration."