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What is Amethyst?
Amethyst is the world’s most popular purple gem. It is the purple color variety of quartz that has been used in personal adornment for over 2000 years. Amethyst is the birthstone of February and an important New Age gem. It is used to produce faceted stones, cabochons, beads, tumbled stones, and many other items for jewelry and ornamental use. Amethyst has a Mohs…
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Imitation Strawberry Quartz:
Strawberry quartz is very popular and abundant, however, material with a superb color and appearance is rare. Nature does not provide enough superb strawberry quartz to meet the demand. So, numerous people have figured out how to make materials that look just like strawberry quartz. The most common imitation is made by melting glass and…
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Strawberry Quartz Quality Factors:
The most desirable pieces of strawberry quartz have a distinctly pink or red color without traces of other hues. Their color is uniform across the face of the gem. The inclusions should be large enough to be eye-visible but not so large that surface-reaching inclusions leave a noticeable pit on the surface of the gem.…
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Single-Crystal and Granular Quartz:
Most specimens of strawberry quartz consist of single quartz crystals with included red minerals. However, some specimens consist of granular quartz in the form of quartzite with inclusions of lepidolite or alurgite mica. Quartzite is a metamorphic rock that forms when a sandstone is subjected to heat and pressure. This type of strawberry quartz is often aventurescent…
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Uses of Strawberry Quartz:
The most popular use of strawberry quartz is in jewelry. Strawberry quartz makes beautiful cabochons, beads, bangles, and faceted gems. Although strawberry quartz is rare, it remains an inexpensive gem. That allows it to be made into inexpensive jewelry using sterling silver or 10 karat gold mountings. The buyer might splurge on a 14 karat…
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What is Strawberry Quartz ?
“Strawberry quartz” is a novelty gem and a marketing term used for specimens of pink to red quartz or quartzite that receive their color from eye-visible mineral inclusions. Colorless quartz colored pink to red by inclusions of other minerals. The inclusions can be small platelets of hematite, flakes of lepidolite, flakes of alurgite (a orangy red muscovite), crystals of piemontite, or other minerals…
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Know What You Are Buying:
Synthetic rubies, sapphires and other types of gems are easy to find in the marketplace. Many stores sell them, and they account for a very significant percentage of the rubies and sapphires sold today. There is nothing wrong with selling them and nothing wrong with buying them. However, the essential part of the transaction is…
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Synthetic Corundum:
Rubies and sapphires have been highly sought after in many parts of the world for over one thousand years. Deposits that produce high-quality stones of good color have attracted enormous amounts of attention and have been heavily exploited. As a result, buyers who need large quantities of quality stones are having a harder time finding…
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Explosion of Global Sapphire Resources:
Two of the more spectacular events in the history of gemstone mining occurred when heat treatment discoveries enabled geuda (a milky white to brownish corundum, found mainly in Sri Lanka) to be converted into beautiful blue gems. Worthless corundum had suddenly become valuable! Until then the worldwide resource of blue sapphire rough was becoming more…
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Mining Rubies and Sapphires:
Most gem-grade corundum forms in metamorphic rocks, such as schist or gneiss; or in igneous rocks such as basalt or syenite. However, gem corundums are rarely mined from the rocks in which they form. Mining small gems from hard rock is possible, but it is very expensive, and many of the gems are broken during the mining process. Fortunately, corundum is very hard…