The Atelier

Where the trade comes to buy.

Ratnapura has been sending stones to the rest of the world for two thousand years. The dealers who supply Geneva and Bangkok buy out of the same pits we do. The only difference is how many hands a stone passes through before it reaches you.

RATNAPURA · HAND DUG · BOUGHT AT THE SOURCE
Serendip Soul Atelier

Everyone’s gems come from somewhere.
A great many come from here.

Sri Lanka has been the trade’s quiet supplier since before most of the countries buying from it existed. Here is what that looks like on the ground.

01

Ratnapura

Ratna is gem. Pura is city. The name has been literal for centuries. Most of the island’s large gem houses work out of Ratnapura, and buyers fly in from Thailand and beyond to work its three markets. When a stone turns up at a jeweler in Geneva or New York, there is a fair chance it came through this town first.

02

Dug by hand, still

The stones come out of river gravel the miners call illam. A pit runs about two meters by four at the surface and drops anywhere from five to twenty five meters, worked with hand tools and a basket. Of roughly 6,565 mining licenses issued across the island in 2013, more than six thousand were for pits exactly like these.

03

On the record since 543 BC

The Mahavamsa records Sri Lankan gems in 543 BC. Pliny wrote the island up for Rome under Claudius. Marco Polo came to see for himself in 1293. People have been making this trip for a very long time, and all of them for the same reason.

We are not importing Ceylon stone. We are buying it where it comes out of the ground, from workshops we know by name, and keeping the chain between the pit and you about as short as it goes.

Beyond the finished piece.

Loose Ceylon stones to set your own way, fine pieces from Amano, and the Batcha and Lunar gem lines.

Loose GemsUnset Ceylon sapphire, spinel and moonstone, bought at the source and ready to set your own way.Explore loose gems → AmanoFine pieces by Amano, a Sri Lankan master jeweler working out of Frankfurt.Explore Amano → Batcha GemsThe bench that sets our fine work, a short drive from the pits that supply it.Explore Batcha Gems → Lunar GemsMoonstone cut in Meetiyagoda, the house our Lanka Luna stone comes from.Explore Lunar Gems →

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