September Birthstone: Sapphire Jewelry

Sapphire, on the modern list that the American and British trade have used since 1912. It is the only stone assigned to the month in that table, unlike June, October, November and December, which each carry alternatives.

In ordinary usage a September gift means a blue stone, and that is what most September pieces are set with.

Older tables occasionally name something else for the month, which is why an antique reference or an inherited piece may not agree with a modern chart.

In the modern list, yes. September was set as sapphire in 1912 and has never been changed, while several other months have been revised in the same period.

Before 1912 there was no single list. Competing traditions circulated in parallel, and although sapphire appears for September in most of the widely reproduced tables, it does not appear in all of them.

The consistency is real but recent. A century of agreement across the trade is what makes the association feel ancient and settled.

Partly because there were competing traditions and no authority to reconcile them, and partly because the old stone names did not mean what the same words mean today.

The Polish and Russian tables reproduced in nineteenth-century gift books give chrysolite for September, a term that then covered several yellow-green stones now separated into distinct species.

Classical writers used sapphirus for what was probably lapis lazuli. Any table older than the modern one is describing colours and reputations rather than minerals.

The National Association of Jewelers, the American retail trade body, at its 1912 meeting in Kansas City. The aim was a single table every jeweller in the country could sell from.

It has been amended rarely. Tanzanite joined December in 2002 and spinel joined August in 2016, both on the recommendation of the successor bodies to that association.

It is a commercial standard rather than an ancient inheritance, which is worth knowing whenever someone insists that one particular stone is the correct one for a month.

The fifth and the forty-fifth, on the anniversary lists most commonly followed in Britain and the United States. Those lists are conventions in exactly the way the birthstone table is.

Sixty-five years is described as a sapphire jubilee. The phrase was rare until 2017, when Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to reach sixty-five years on the throne.

A fifth anniversary and a forty-fifth call for very different pieces, so the year matters more than the stone when deciding what to buy.

A sixty-fifth anniversary, usually of a reign but increasingly of a marriage. It follows the established pattern of silver at twenty-five years, golden at fifty and diamond at sixty.

It entered common use in February 2017. No British monarch had previously reigned long enough for the term to be needed at all.

As a gift occasion it tends to call for something that will actually be worn, which in practice usually means a pendant or a pair of earrings rather than a ring.

The order of decisions reverses. Choosing a stone for yourself, colour and setting and budget are weighed together and the species falls out at the end. Choosing for a birth month, the species is settled first and everything else follows from it.

That constraint is what gives the gift its meaning. The recipient can see it was chosen for them specifically rather than picked off a shelf.

It also removes the hardest part of buying jewellery for someone else, which is guessing at taste in a field where taste is very personal.

It is among the safer options, because the reasoning behind it is visible. A piece obviously chosen for someone's month reads as considered even where the design is not quite what they would have picked themselves.

The two things worth establishing first are whether they wear jewellery at all, and whether the pieces they already own are yellow, white or rose.

Beyond that, a restrained setting travels further than an elaborate one. Something quiet is easier to live with than a strong design that has to be liked.

Birth order read from left to right is the common convention and the one most people expect. Grouping by colour is the alternative, and it suits designs where the stones sit in a cluster rather than a row.

Where two members of a family share a month, either two identical stones are set side by side or one stone is taken to stand for both. That is a decision to make before ordering rather than afterwards.

Adding a stone at a later date is straightforward in some designs and impossible in others, so it is worth settling at the outset if the family may still grow.

It is a long-established christening and first-birthday gift, and it is often given to be kept rather than worn immediately. A small pendant on a chain that can be lengthened later is the usual form.

Where a piece is meant to be worn by a young child, a low setting with no raised corners is the sensible choice, and earrings are better left until a piercing has fully settled.

Many people buy in the year of birth and hand the piece over years later, which also removes any question of getting a measurement right.