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A model holds a rare 17th-century Indian necklace with eleven spinel pendants (Photo: JOHNNY EGGITT/AFP/Getty Images) |
August babies, you are in luck: you have a brand-new birthstone! In June, the Jewelers of America and the American Gem Trade Association
announced that August would now have two birthstones: the traditional peridot and the spinel.
Spinels come in a variety of colors, but the most famous hue of all is red. These red spinels were long known as "balas rubies," and in fact, for centuries, spinels were regularly mistaken for rubies. The technology to distinguish between the two stones wasn't available until the 1700s.
Because of this, many of the great "rubies" in royal collections from centuries past were actually spinels. Today, we're looking at four of these great red stones, which are part of crown jewel collections from the UK to Iran and places in between.