The early history of beryllium diffusion in sapphire, starting with the 2001 appearance of large numbers of padparadscha sapphires in the Thai gem market.

An orangish pink “padparadscha” sapphire was submitted for testing at Lotus Gemology’s Bangkok laboratory. Testing showed a number of conflicting features that suggested the gem was a cleverly treated synthetic pink sapphire designed to imitate natural padparadscha.

A discussion of the definition of padparadscha sapphire, from early to modern times, along with the difficulty in standardizing such definitions.

A brief description of the color types for ruby and sapphire used at Lotus Gemology.

An examination of the problem of separating pink sapphire and padparadscha from ruby.