Blog

There are many interesting things in the history of moissanite. Even though this stone is used a lot now to add sparkle to jewelry, it is still fairly new. Learn more about the history of moissanite by reading on.

Moissanite has been around since 1893 when it was first found. Henri Moissan, a French chemist, was the first person to figure out what these stones were. But he had the wrong idea about who they were. The gem that would become known as moissanite was found in Canyon Diablo, Arizona, in a crater made by a meteorite. Dr. Moissan thought the crystals were diamonds while he was looking at them because they looked and felt like diamonds. Both gems shine so brightly and look almost colorless, like clear glass. The chemist didn’t find out that he had been wrong until 1904. He saw that these new crystals were made of silicone carbide, which was different from diamond. Moissan went on to win a Nobel Prize in his field, so it was only right to name the stone after him.

Over time, it became very rare for moissanite to be found in its natural state. Once it was found, it was rarely found anywhere else but in meteorites. In fact, other sources of naturally occurring moissanite didn’t show up again until the 1950s.

Moissanite Is Made Again in a Lab

Since this stone wasn’t very common, it wasn’t often used to make jewelry. But the stone’s beauty and brilliance were too much for some creative minds to ignore. In the 1980s, a company called CREE began to work on a way to make this stone in a way that was not natural. Most of the time before 1995, these crystals were too big to be used in jewelry. Around that time, a group of diamond cutters, CREE scientists, and Charles & Colvard researchers started looking into how to use the beauty of moissanite in fine jewelry. Since then, this crystal has become a popular, less expensive way to get the shine of a diamond. There are now many different kinds of this gem. Depending on the option chosen for the piece of jewelry, it can be completely colorless or have a slight yellowish-brown tint.

Moissanite Timeline was made

Since the 1980s, the semiconductor business has made silicon carbide. At the time, no one in the jewelry business could have imagined that these same silicon carbide crystals could be made to look almost colorless. Charles & Colvard was started in 1995. In the late 1990s, it was the first company to make jewelry with moissanite. In 1998, the company was given patents for making SiC gemstones in a lab. Forever Classic moissanite was the only type of moissanite that could be bought, and its colors ranged from I to J to K. In 2012, Charles & Colvard responded to changes in the market by making Forever Brilliant, a whiter type of moissanite. Forever Brilliant is about the same color as a G-H diamond. In 2015, the company came out with Forever One, which is the whitest moissanite on the market.