Stefano Ricci Dual Flame Lighter — Purple Diaspore / Palladium

Stefano Ricci Dual Flame Lighter — Purple Diaspore / Palladium

There is a quality that only a handful of gemstones possess: the ability to change color in response to the light source. Alexandrite has it. A narrow range of garnets has it. Purple Diaspore — mined exclusively from a single deposit in the Anatolian mountains of Turkey — has it in a particularly dramatic form, shifting from a cool sage green under daylight to a warm rose and lavender under incandescent light. The change is not subtle. The same stone, in the same setting, in the same room, is genuinely a different color depending on whether the window is the dominant light source or the lamp is. Stefano Ricci sets this stone into a palladium finishing dual flame lighter, where the instrument that produces fire also determines how the stone that accompanies it appears.

Purple Diaspore

The stone on this lighter is real Purple Diaspore — not the more common versions that display a milder shift, but the full color-change variety whose transformation between daylight and incandescent light is pronounced enough to be remarked upon by anyone in the room. Supply is limited and geologically constrained; the deposit in Turkey is the only significant commercial source. The precise character of the shift varies between stones: some run from grey-green toward mauve; others carry a stronger lavender in warm light. What they share is the change itself, which is the entire point of the material.

Palladium Finishing

Palladium is precisely correct for Purple Diaspore. Under daylight, when the stone is at its coolest and most sage-green, the palladium finishing mirrors that coolness — two silvery, restrained tones that work together without crowding. Under incandescent light, when the stone shifts toward rose and purple, the palladium recedes and lets the warm tones of the stone take over completely. Gold would compete with the stone's evening character; palladium steps aside for it.

Dual Flame

The lighter produces two flame types from a single instrument: a soft, controlled flame for cigarettes and a torch flame for cigars. Both are immediately available. The dual flame format is the standard for Stefano Ricci's lighter collection — a working tool built to the same standard as the stone that accompanies it. The flame is also the reason the stone on this lighter looks different from the outside of the room.

Now available at The Tobacconist of Greenwich.