This is one of the 14K white gold custom rings Kirk Milette created for a client with a 7.3 ct. Rainbow Moonstone. Kirk pulled this unique stone out of his personal collection, (it was originally mined from the Monsoon swept lowlands of southern India in the 1980’s). This special setting was the collaboration of sketching and requests form the client. The finished ring featured about a third carat of small flush mounted Diamonds on the rim, adding a beautiful sparkle to the luminescence of the large Rainbow Moonstone.
Rainbow Moonstones of this size and clarity were dug by hand until the early 80’s. The area is flooded many months of the year, limiting any mining. Sometime around the mid 1980’s the world wide demand increased and alternative methods were attempted, but the largest clean pieces of rough had already been found years earlier. The finest stones over 2 carats were increasingly hard to come by, over the next decade and a half, the supply of good rough material became nonexistent from it’s only source. The opportunity to do a custom Ring setting like this was the completion of a vision for this beautiful collectable Large Rainbow Moonstone.
There is new lower grade ‘Rainbow Moonstone’ material coming out of Africa. It is heavily fractured, with occasional small sections of cleaner rough you can get nicer finished stones of 1 to 3 carats. Even this new material seems to be in short supply, much of it is carved, or made into beads.