Meetiyagoda moonstone drops
Blue-sheen moonstone from the one pit in Meetiyagoda that still produces it.
$210
Ranjith Perera
- Perera & Son, cutters
- Ratnapura, Sabaragamuwa Province
- 1988
Ratnapura means city of gems, and it is not a marketing name — the alluvial gravels under the paddy fields have been worked for two thousand years, by men in shafts propped with rubber logs, hauling baskets up by hand. Ranjith does not dig. He cuts.
The wheel is hand-cranked, which sounds like nostalgia and is not: a motor runs at one speed, and a hand can slow down for the last few passes on a facet, which is where a stone is won or lost. Moonstone from Meetiyagoda is the material he is best known for — it is soft, at six on the Mohs scale, and the blue shimmer only appears if the dome is cut square to the right axis. Cut it a few degrees off and you have a grey pebble.
He sets in silver he has melted down himself, mostly from old Sri Lankan rupee coins and worn-out settings people bring him. He has never bought new silver and says he does not see the point when the island is full of it already.
