True North Gems Inc., based in Vancouver, Canada, completed carving the company's Fiskenaesset (Greenland) 440 carat ruby. The rough gemstone, found in 2005, was worked by carver Thomas McPhee into a 302 carat jewel of intricate oceanic legends and called the Kitaa Ruby.
The video of the finished Kitaa Ruby --with commentary-- is available at the end of this story.In consulting with gemologists and McPhee, True North Gems valued the carving at more than CAN500,000 ($450,000.) Due to the hardness of ruby, which is second only to diamond, and the elaborate detail of the carving, it took McPhee more than 10 months to create this piece.
While the rough ruby was originally announced at 200 carats, by True North Gems, subsequent work in removing the surrounding rock during the carving process proved it to be 440 carats.
True North describes the Kitaa Ruby as a carving, which embodies the epic Greenlanic saga, in scale and continuity from the proud Norse heritage to the indigenous Inuit traditions of a beautiful and ancient land. It harmonizes earth and ocean, and conveys the natural rhythmns of the Arctic Maritime between the Mother of the Seas and the Children of the Land.
To view the finished product and listen to commentary about the piece from Nick Houghton, director of True North Gems, you have two options: 1) Click the image below to launch in Windows Media Player or...
2) Right click on the image below to 'Save As' a file on your local computer and view in a program for .wmv files. Viewing time: 2:03 minutes, Size 5.5MB
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