The Egyptians said that topaz was colored with the golden glow of the sun god. Legend has it that topaz dispels all enchantment and helps to improve eyesight. The ancient Greeks believed that it had the power to increase strength and make its wearer invisible in times of emergency.

Topaz sometimes has the amber gold of fine cognac or the blush of a peach and all the beautiful warm browns and oranges in between. Some rare and exceptional examples are pale pink to a sherry red. Sometimes peach-colored topaz can be “pinked” by gentle heating. This color change is permanent.

Blue, once the most rare color of topaz, is today the most common, thanks to a stable enhancement process that turns colorless topaz blue. After the raw Topaz is extracted from the earth and cut, it is irradiated to brown and then heated to sky blue. This enhancement process is permanent.

Due to the popularity of blue topaz, a new treatment process called vapor deposition has been developed to create additional colors of topaz. In this treatment process, similar to those used by opticians and camera makers to make lens coatings, a thin film is bonded on the surface of topaz to create dark blue, red, pink and green colors or rainbow iridescence. These vapor deposition-enhanced topaz colors must be handled with special care as the coating can be scratched or abraded.