Gemstone Beading Material -- Garnet

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Thursday, July 24, 2008

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Garnets: Gemstone Colors for each Fashion Trend

If you love the immaculate naturalness and sun-drenched warm colors of Indian summer; you will fall in love with range of colors displayed by Garnets. Today these stones come mainly from African countries, also from India, Russia, central and south America. The skilled hands of cutters all over the world shape them in many classical forms and increasingly in modern fancy designer's cuts. Garnets appeal generally because of their natural and not manipulated beauty, their wide variety of colors and their magnificent brilliance. If you buy Garnet jewellery, you can be certain to enjoy this gemstone gift from Nature permanently and without inhibitions.

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Garnets as Beads

This is one of the most widely used and inexpensive gesmtone beads found in the market.
Garnets are the superbly deep red gemstones, which are often found in old-fashioned jewellery. As a warm and deep red is without a doubt the most frequently occurring color for Garnets. Only few people know that the kingdom of Garnets holds many bright and beautiful colors. The conventional image of Garnet has been brightly altered by fantastic founds, mainly in Africa. Even though red remains the main color, Garnets today easily adapt to any new color trend in fashion due to the varieties available. Because of the new finds, there are dependable sources for the steady supply in these fancy colors.

An expert will understand "Garnet" as the denomination for a group of over ten different gemstones with a parallel chemical structure. Although the color red is the one that occurs most often, there are also Garnets that show shades of green, pale to bright yellow, fiery orange and fine earth- and umbra-shades. Only the color blue is not available in Garnet. Garnets are gemstones which are in high demand and are often worked into pieces of jewellery especially since today not only the established gemstone colors red, blue and green are treasured by the customer, but the intermediary shades and hues are also popular

Garnets are quite strong and resistant to everyday wear and tear, and simple to work into jewellery. Only hard impacts or high heat adversely affects Garnets. Another point in favor of Garnets is their amazing brilliance. Garnet means something like "the grainy" and is derived from the Latin word "granum" meaning "grain". This refers to the typically rounded shape of Garnet and reminds of the seeds of the pomegranate. In the middle ages, Garnet was also called "karfunkel" in German, referring to the glowing red embers of a fire.
The Garnet illuminated Noah's Ark
Garnets have been widely known for thousands of years. Even Noah, it is reported, used a lantern from Garnet in order to safely steer his Ark through the darkness of the night. Garnets are found in jewellery from ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman eras. Many brave explorers and travelers wore Garnets for protection, as they were considered popular talismans and protective stones, it was believed in those days that Garnets illuminate the night and prevent their wearer from any sort of evil. Today science explained to us that the proverbial luminosity of Garnet is caused by its high refraction of light.

Colorful World of Garnets: The fantastic found of an up to then extremely rare Garnet variety puzzled experts all over the world some years ago. On the Kunene River, on the border between Namibia and Angola, there was the surprising and spectacular discovery of bright orange to red Spessartine Garnets, which were originally named after their occurrence in the German Spessart Mountains. Until the legendary mine was discovered in Namibia, Spessartines had existed as mere collector's items or rarities. They were hardly ever used for jewellery because they were so rare. But the found changed the world of jewellery gemstones. From this time on, an exceptionally fine and brightly orange-red gemstone has completed the offered range. The trade name "Mandarine -Garnet" was coined, and the wonderfully orange colored Fine Garnet became world-famous almost over night. Unfortunately, the mine in the remote Namibian mountains could only be exploited for a few years. Prospecting for the gemstones in the isolated bush land became more and more complicated and expensive It had to be expected, then , that the very upstart among the quality gemstones would only be available in limited amounts from the stocks of few cutters. However, discovering another occurrence of the orange-colored treasures, this time in Nigeria, caused another sensation. In color and brilliance they are so similar to the Namibian stones that only experienced experts will be able to tell them apart.

Green Garnets - do they really exist? Of course! There are even several known green Garnet varieties. First of all, there is Grossularite, which was created by Nature in many fine colors from yellow to green and brown, and which is especially cherished because of the many in-between shades. And earth-colors. Here there was also a sensational found: In the last year of the 20th century large Grossularite occurrences were discovered in Mali. The Mali Garnets are charming because of their high brilliance, which makes even the usually not so popular brown color attractive and vivid, and the natural appeal is in wonderful harmony especially with ethno-look inspired trends.

Possibly the most famous green Garnet is Tsavorith or Tsavolith, another Grossularite. Tiffany's in New York re-named the stone, which had been discovered in 1967 by British geologist Campbell R. Bridges in Northeast Tanzania. The emerald-green stone was named after its occurrence near the famous game park Tsavo-National Park. Tsavorith is of a vivid light to velvety deep green and, like all other Garnets, of strikingly high brilliance.

The star among green Garnets is rare Demantoid, a gemstone for connoisseurs and lovers. It shows enormous brilliance, higher even than that of Diamond. Russia's leading court jeweler Carl Fabergé loved the brilliant green Garnet from the Urals more than any other stone, and liked to use it in his creations. Nowadays Demantoid turns up more often in the gemstone market because of the new founds in Namibia. Demantoids from Namibia show good colour and brilliance, however, they lack s minor characteristic: the so-called "horsetail-inclusions", fine bushy-shaped inclusions which are the characteristic birthmark identifying Russian Demantoids.

A Disclaimer: Effort has been made of including information that is found in at least two sources. I can make no claim on the accuracy of this information. I am not a Geologist or Gemologist. I make no guarantees and infer no warranties. For more information, please refer to the bibliography.
Copyright Information: Although I have included a bibliography, but no attempt has been made to give credit to individual passages. If you are an author and feel that I have infringed on your copyrighted material please let me know. With that in mind, all material and information, retain their respected Copyrights.
I encourage the reader to pursue the further study of any topic that they find particularly interesting. A good place to start is your local library.
Bibliography:

The curious lore of precious stones - Author Kunz, George Frederick, 1856-1932.

Gem identification made easy - Matlins, Antoinette Leonard.

Gems: Their Sources, Descriptions and Identification - By Robert Webster, Peter G. Read (Editor).

Gemstone Enhancement: history, science and state of the art - by Kurt Nassau.

Gemstones of the world - Walter Schumann ; translated by Evelyne Stern.

Gems, Minerals & Lapidary Links

Have you ever sent he inside story of a modern bead factory in India? I asked one of my suppliers to send me back some pictures. Check out the Tour.