It happens at our counter on Royal Street almost every day. A customer slips a VooDooStone ring onto her finger under the shop lights, and it glows a warm golden amber. She walks to the doorway to see it in the daylight, and suddenly it's a soft purplish pink. She looks up at us with wide eyes and asks the question we hear more than any other:
"Wait. How does it do that?"
It feels like magic, and in New Orleans we never mind a little magic. But there is real, beautiful science behind it too. Here's the story of how one stone can wear so many colors.
💎 What VooDooStone Is
VooDooStone is our shop's own signature gem, created for David's Antiques & Jewelry and inspired by the colors and mystery of New Orleans. It is a lab-created diaspore, a crystal that is known in nature for one rare talent: it changes color depending on the light around it.
Natural color-change diaspore is found in only a few places in the world, most famously high in the mountains of Turkey, and large clean stones are very rare and expensive. Growing it in a lab gives us the same color-changing crystal, cut and set into jewelry everyone can enjoy.
🌈 One Stone, Three Lights
Watch the same VooDooStone move through your day:
☀️ In natural daylight: a soft purplish pink
💡 Under warm indoor light and candlelight: a rich golden amber, like a New Orleans sunset
🟢 Under cool fluorescent light: a fresh, bright green
Purple, gold and green. Yes, the colors of Mardi Gras, all hiding in one stone.
🔬 So How Does It Work?
Here's the secret: a gemstone has no color of its own. What we see is the light the stone lets through to our eyes.
White light is really a mix of every color of the rainbow. Most gems swallow some of those colors and let the rest pass through. A ruby lets red through, so it looks red. Simple.
A color-change stone is special. It swallows the colors in the middle of the rainbow, and lets two different groups of color through at once: some on the warm, reddish side, and some on the cool, greenish side. It's almost perfectly balanced between them.
So the color you see depends on what the light is made of:
Warm light, like a lamp or a candle, is rich in red and gold. The stone's warm side wins, and it glows amber.
Cool light, like fluorescent tubes, is richer in blue and green. The stone's cool side wins, and it turns green.
Daylight sits in between, and the two mix into a soft purple pink.
Gemologists call this the color-change effect, and it's the same reason the famous alexandrite turns from green to red.
✨ The Second Trick: Three Colors at Once
VooDooStone has one more secret. It is trichroic, which means "three colors." The crystal can show slightly different shades when you look at it from different directions, because light travels through it differently along each direction of the crystal.
That's why, even in the same light, a VooDooStone seems to flash and shift as you turn your hand. It's never quite still.
🏠 Try It Yourself
If you already own a VooDooStone piece, try this tonight:
Look at it next to a sunny window.
Walk it over to a warm table lamp.
Then hold it under a kitchen or office light.
Three rooms, three different stones. It's the best party trick in your jewelry box.
💡 Tip: the color change is easiest to see in a larger stone. If the color shift is what you love most, choose a piece with a generous center stone.
⚜️ Why We Call It VooDooStone
A stone that changes its spirit with the light, that seems to know whether it's day or night, belongs in New Orleans. We named it for our city, a place where history, mystery and celebration live side by side, and where the colors purple, green and gold mean something to everyone.
🛍️ See the Magic for Yourself
Visit us at 322 Royal Street and watch a VooDooStone change color right in your hand, or explore the collection online.
