Skip to product information
  • A large etched crystal of bi-color beryl showing a dramatic transition from golden yellow heliodor to blue-green aquamarine. The naturally etched surface creates a mesmerizing pattern of hexagonal pyramids, giving the 566-carat specimen a sculptural quality. The crystal appears translucent and glows when backlit, emphasizing its unique color zoning.
  • A large etched crystal of bi-color beryl showing a dramatic transition from golden yellow heliodor to blue-green aquamarine. The naturally etched surface creates a mesmerizing pattern of hexagonal pyramids, giving the 566-carat specimen a sculptural quality. The crystal appears translucent and glows when backlit, emphasizing its unique color zoning.
  • A large etched crystal of bi-color beryl showing a dramatic transition from golden yellow heliodor to blue-green aquamarine. The naturally etched surface creates a mesmerizing pattern of hexagonal pyramids, giving the 566-carat specimen a sculptural quality. The crystal appears translucent and glows when backlit, emphasizing its unique color zoning.
  • A large etched crystal of bi-color beryl showing a dramatic transition from golden yellow heliodor to blue-green aquamarine. The naturally etched surface creates a mesmerizing pattern of hexagonal pyramids, giving the 566-carat specimen a sculptural quality. The crystal appears translucent and glows when backlit, emphasizing its unique color zoning.
  • A large etched crystal of bi-color beryl showing a dramatic transition from golden yellow heliodor to blue-green aquamarine. The naturally etched surface creates a mesmerizing pattern of hexagonal pyramids, giving the 566-carat specimen a sculptural quality. The crystal appears translucent and glows when backlit, emphasizing its unique color zoning.
  • A large etched crystal of bi-color beryl showing a dramatic transition from golden yellow heliodor to blue-green aquamarine. The naturally etched surface creates a mesmerizing pattern of hexagonal pyramids, giving the 566-carat specimen a sculptural quality. The crystal appears translucent and glows when backlit, emphasizing its unique color zoning.
  • A large etched crystal of bi-color beryl showing a dramatic transition from golden yellow heliodor to blue-green aquamarine. The naturally etched surface creates a mesmerizing pattern of hexagonal pyramids, giving the 566-carat specimen a sculptural quality. The crystal appears translucent and glows when backlit, emphasizing its unique color zoning.
  • A large etched crystal of bi-color beryl showing a dramatic transition from golden yellow heliodor to blue-green aquamarine. The naturally etched surface creates a mesmerizing pattern of hexagonal pyramids, giving the 566-carat specimen a sculptural quality. The crystal appears translucent and glows when backlit, emphasizing its unique color zoning.
  • A large etched crystal of bi-color beryl showing a dramatic transition from golden yellow heliodor to blue-green aquamarine. The naturally etched surface creates a mesmerizing pattern of hexagonal pyramids, giving the 566-carat specimen a sculptural quality. The crystal appears translucent and glows when backlit, emphasizing its unique color zoning.
  • A large etched crystal of bi-color beryl showing a dramatic transition from golden yellow heliodor to blue-green aquamarine. The naturally etched surface creates a mesmerizing pattern of hexagonal pyramids, giving the 566-carat specimen a sculptural quality. The crystal appears translucent and glows when backlit, emphasizing its unique color zoning.

BERYL VAR. AQUAMARINE & HELIODOR

Padre Paraíso, Minas Gerais, Brazil
5.2 x 4.7 x 3.4 cm
$8,500.00
$8,500.00
Shipping calculated at checkout.

ABOUT THE SPECIMEN

Presenting this mesmerizing, one-of-a-kind, etched bi-color beryl from Brazil. When viewed from the side, it presents simply as a beautiful heliodor, yet when light is shone down the c-axis  one can clearly see a distinguished zone of beautiful blue-green aquamarine. Both are varieties of beryl, aquamarine getting its color from the presence of ferrous iron (Fe²⁺) and heliodor from inclusions of ferric iron (Fe³⁺). On very rare occasions such as this you'll get both of them growing together, giving the assemblage known as ‘aquador’. What makes this even more of an anomalous specimen is the way that the color zoning occurred - longitudinal, with both the aquamarine and heliodor sections running from base to termination, rather than the more commonly seen axial zoning where the differentiation occurs along the growth of the c-axis. This longitudinal geometry has, to the best of my knowledge, only been described from Brumado in Bahia, although the actual form of this crystal does appear much more like Minas Gerais material. The top and sides are complete, the textures from the etching are fascinating and the top has been transformed from a flat surface into dozens of hexagonal pyramids. There's some contacting on the bottom, though it doesn't look abrasive and it can be hard to distinguish what's contacted and what's etched. The piece weighs 566 carats and if it were to be cut right, the value of the resulting gemstone(s) could be extraordinary. For me it'd be hard to do so, as it's just such a marvelous and unique specimen!

 

VIDEO

 

MORE INFO

Padre Paraíso's G5-suite pegmatites within the Araçuaí orogen produce a broad suite of beryl varieties from a single district - aquamarine, heliodor, morganite, and goshenite have all been documented from closely related workings. "Aquador" is a trade name applied primarily to crystals exhibiting a continuous prism transitioning from yellow to yellow-green heliodor at the base into pale to medium blue aquamarine at the termination, the color shift recording a change in iron oxidation state during crystal growth: ferric iron in the octahedral aluminum site produces yellow, ferrous iron produces blue. A rarer and more visually striking subset exhibits longitudinal bicolor zoning parallel to the c-axis - one sector of the prism running aquamarine from base to termination while the adjacent sector runs heliodor for the full length, the boundary between them a defined planar demarcation rather than a gradational transition. GIA documentation of analogous geometry in Brumado beryl from Bahia confirms this is a genuine Brazilian beryl phenomenon, attributable to distinct growth sector partitioning of iron oxidation states rather than sequential fluid chemistry shifts over time. A subset of Padre Paraíso material also carries enhydro fluid inclusions - an unusual occurrence in color-zoned beryl. Fully gemmy examples with saturated color contrast in either geometry are the exception among what circulates under the trade name, and longitudinally zoned crystals in particular are rarely recognized as distinct from standard Aquador material in the trade.