GEM DANDIES : Semiprecious stones are appreciating as jewelers and shoppers begin to appreciate the range of colors and versatility.

Colored gemstones used to fall into two categories: the big three--emeralds, rubies and sapphires--and everything else, which was classified as semiprecious.

Semiprecious stones are no longer treated like poor relations. Colored gemstones such as tourmaline and tanzanite have grown so much in value and prestige in recent years that jewelers say the term “semiprecious” has become outdated. Some semiprecious gems are even more valuable than so-called precious gems.

People have come to appreciate semiprecious stones as beautiful gems in their own right. The stones offer a rich spectrum of colors, from the deep, translucent purple of tanzanite to the yellowish green of peridot. Many stones, such as tourmaline and topaz, come in a rainbow of hues.

“As a (jewelry) designer, you have a total palette to work with. You can find a stone in almost any color whereas, with the big three, you’re fairly limited,” says Lance Heck, a jewelry designer in Laguna Beach. “Semiprecious stones used to be substitutes for sapphires and rubies, but now they’re coming into their own.”

Creative jewelry designers treat the colored gemstones the way an artist treats paints, mixing hues to create dramatic contrasts often not possible with precious gems.

“Colored gemstones come in a lot of unusual, one-of-a-kind cuts, so they lend themselves to custom pieces,” Heck says. “Diamonds have a more standard cut, whereas with colored stones there’s more leeway because the material isn’t quite as expensive. The (gem cutters) will go more by what the rough stone looks like instead of standardized shapes.”

Heck uses unusual-shaped stones to design unique pieces such as a colorful tiered pendant of three rounded triangular-shaped tourmalines in deep red, gold and blue-green accented with a few small diamonds ($3,500), as well as a dramatic Art Deco-style brooch of inlaid opal and blue-green tourmaline ($5,400).

Designers can create bolder looks using larger stones that aren’t as scarce or expensive as precious gems.

“You can go bigger, whereas with the other three (precious gems), you have to stay fairly small because of the cost,” Heck says. Tanzanite, for example, resembles a sapphire but costs far less. Its violet hue and array of shapes have transformed it from an unknown stone to a hot rock.

“People are beginning to know the stones by name. They used to come in and say, ‘I want a purple stone.’ Now they ask for tanzanite,” Heck says. The Italian jeweler Bvlgari, which recently opened a store in South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, was among the first jewelers to introduce semiprecious stones into fine jewelry.

“One of the reasons people love semiprecious stones is the combination of color,” says Bonnie Kyle, West Coast director of Bvlgari.

Bvlgari creates chokers of multicolored stones mixed with gold, pearls and even fine white porcelain. One gold link necklace has boules that look like colorful marbles made of blue calledoinies, jade, rhodosite (a pink opaque stone) and amethyst ($15,000). Another necklace has fully cut rondelles (a narrow bead) of amethyst, peridot, pink tourmaline, aquamarine and green tourmaline, interspersed with a gold hook links and pearls ($28,000).

“Some people like the clear stones, and some like the opaque. The opaque are very big in Europe,” Kyle says.

Technology has played a key role in expanding the role of colored gemstones in the jewelry market.

“We can get things out of the Earth we couldn’t get before,” says Ron Cohan, owner of Zia Jewelry Company in San Juan Capistrano.

Thanks to advanced mining techniques, stones buried deep in the Earth have become more accessible in recent years. Sugellite, a rich opaque purple stone discovered in the ‘40s, did not become widely available until the 1980s because it had to be retrieved from 3,000 feet below the surface in Africa. Now it, too, is becoming increasingly rare.

“The entire deposit is about the size of a car,” Cohan says. “It’s going for higher and higher prices.”

New cutting and polishing techniques have improved the color and fire of the stones, enhancing their value and appeal.

“Years ago they weren’t handled well or cut well,” Cohan says.

Lasers have allowed gem cutters to carve extra facets in the stones for added sparkle, he says.

“They can turn a medium stone into a fantastic cut gem.”

Jewelry designers, meanwhile, have learned to show off the stones to their best advantage. Many now inlay stones side by side into channels, a process that eliminates the use of prongs and bezels.

“It lets the colors come through better,” Cohan says.

Southwest jewelry designers Raoul and Even Star Sosa are known for creating colorful mosaics with stones. One shield-shaped pendant at Zia has a deep purple center amethyst surrounded by sugalite and opal with red, orange, green and blue fire in it, adorned with a rare blue tourmaline ($3,799).