Aquamarine’s name comes from the Latin for seawater and it was said to calm waves and keep sailors safe at sea. March’s birthstone was also thought to enhance the happiness of marriages. The best gems combine high clarity with limpid transparency and blue to slightly greenish blue hues. Like many beryls, aquamarine forms large crystals suitable for sizable fashioned gems and carvings.

Fine aquamarines are a marriage between color and clarity. The best are dark blue to slightly greenish blue with no visible inclusions. Careful cutting maximizes both qualities to produce superb gems.

Aquamarines can be cut into almost any shape, but cutters often fashion them as emerald cuts or as round or oval brilliants. Many gem artists use aquamarine for one-of-a-kind designer cuts because their styles maximize the material’s pure, even color and high clarity.

Speaking of one-of-a-kind designer cuts, look at the large temple shaped aquamarine pictured to the right. Sometime in the 1980s, prospectors found the stone in a mine in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Originally three feet long and weighing nearly 100 pounds, it was dropped by the prospectors, breaking into three pieces—two of which were sold by the mine owner to be cut into anonymous stones for jewelry. The largest piece escaped that fate; it was named the Dom Pedro, after the first emperor of Brazil, in the 19th century, and his son of the same name, who was the last.

The stone traced a circuitous path to the German workshop of gem artist Bernd Munsteiner who, in the early 1990s, was moving toward using crystals as the raw material of sculpture, rather than for rings and pendants. The Dom Pedro presented both a challenge and a once-in-a-lifetime marketing opportunity, leaving him “fascinated and impressed.”

For four months, Munsteiner studied the crystal, sketching hundreds of designs. As a concept formed in his mind, he named his design Ondas Maritimas (“Waves of the Sea”). He drew dozens of grooves, or “negative facets,” at different angles, trapping the ambient light. At last he picked up a diamond-coated cutting wheel; it took some six months to turn the stone into a finished sculpture.