tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84409857510495928042011-11-27T16:00:40.425-08:00<a href="http://www.gioiellando.com">information about minerals and precious stones</a>gioiellando.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09514554573382929030noreply@blogger.comBlogger411100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8440985751049592804.post-91585171248535718492009-03-05T00:17:00.000-08:002009-03-06T08:40:20.433-08:00

Prehnite’s bright, almost luminescent, swirling green colors (reminiscent of Jade), mesmerizing clarity and striking luster, make it an extremely attractive collector’s gem. In his book, “Gemstones of the World,” Walter Schumann describes Prehnite as a transparent to translucent gemstone, which accounts for its “cloudy” appearance. This is totally normal and like many gemstones, its distinctive

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Due to its glassy luster Fluorite is highly coveted. Fluorite is the natural crystalline form of calcium fluoride and often forms beautiful cube-shaped crystals. It is a transparent to translucent mineral. When pure, Fluorite is colorless; however, it usually contains impurities that color it. The most common colors are violet, blue, green, yellow, brown, pink and bluish black. Arguably, the

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The demantoid is one of the most brilliant gemstones that exist, yet until recently it was little known except among collectors and gemstone lovers. Strictly speaking it is a green garnet, or rather the star of the green garnets. Not without reason does it bear a name which means 'diamond-like'. The name comes from the Dutch and makes reference to the outstanding quality of this gem, its

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Within a very short time, this beautiful gemstone had shot up into the firmament of the international jewellery scene like a rocket. As to the name, there had been a certain amount of wrangling among gemmologists and gemstone dealers. Some called the brilliant orange to orange-red beauties 'Kunene spessartines', after the place where they had been found, whilst others spoke of 'hollandines'. But

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Agate was highly valued as a talisman or amulet in ancient times. It was said to quench thirst and protect against fever. Persian magicians used agate to divert storms. A famous collection of two to four thousand agate bowls which was accumulated by Mithridates, king of Pontus, shows the enthusiasm with which agate was regarded. Agate bowls were also popular in the Byzantine Empire. Collecting

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This is a particularly interesting kind of tourmaline. It is fine traces of magnesium that are responsible for the electrifying yellow colour. Since not all the raw crystals actually show that radiant yellow when they are found, some of the stones first have to submit to a period spent in the oven at approximately 700 degrees Celsius. Without this treatment, the colour would have a slight

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Green tourmalines can be cut in all kinds of different ways. However, the cutting of a tourmaline does require special care, since the colour intensity of most green tourmalines is variously developed depending on the direction of growth. For this reason, dark stones have to be cut in such a way that the table is parallel to the main axis. With light stones, on the other hand, the table surface

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The colour of this gemstone is pure seduction. Its components are red, shocking pink and violet – the typical colour realm of desire and joie de vivre. In the fascinating world of the gemstones, there is hardly any other stone which has such a persuasive erotic aura. The colour range of the rubellite comprises tender shocking pink as well as ambivalent violet. It takes these two components to get

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While most varieties of transparent quartz are valued most when they show no inclusions, some are valued chiefly because of them! The most popular of these is known as rutilated quartz. Rutilated quartz is transparent rock crystal with golden needles of rutile arrayed in patterns inside it. Each pattern is different and some are breathtakingly beautiful. The inclusions are sometimes called Venus

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Tiger's eye quartz contains brown iron which produces its golden yellow colour. Cabochon cut stones of this variety show the chatoyancy (small ray of light on the surface) that resembles the feline eye of a tiger. The most important deposit is in South Africa, though tiger's eye is also found in Western Australia, Burma (Myanmar), India and California.

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The pale pink colour of quartz, which can range from transparent to translucent, is known as rose quartz. The colour is a very pale and delicate powder pink. Transparent rose quartz is very rare, and usually so pale that it does not show very much colour at all except in large sizes. Translucent rose quartz is much more readily available, being used for beads, cabochons, carvings, and

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Pure blue tourmalines are much coveted on account of their beauty and rarity. In fine qualities, blue tourmalines are almost always one-offs. They are also highly esteemed by collectors. They are at their most valuable when they show an intense, clear, radiant blue which is not too dark, the kind of blue that puts one in mind of an aquamarine or a beautiful sapphire. The pure blue of the

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In many cultures of the Old and New Worlds, this gemstone has been esteemed for thousands of years as a holy stone, a bringer of good fortune or a talisman. It really does have the right to be called a 'gemstone of the peoples'. The oldest evidence for this claim was found in Egypt, where grave furnishings with turquoise inlay were discovered, dating from approximately 3000 B.C.. In the ancient

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Although this gemstone came into being millions of years ago, it has only been known by the name of morganite for less than a hundred years. To be precise, in fact, since 1911, since before that the gemmological world simply viewed the 'pink beryl' as a variety of beryl, not as a gemstone in its own right. But it is not only people that change their name. Gemstones sometimes do it too. And so it

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In 1967 a British geologist by the name of Campbell R. Bridges was looking for gemstones in the mountains in the north-east of Tanzania. Suddenly he came across some strange, potato-like nodules of rock. It was like a fairy-tale: inside these strange objects he found some beautiful green grains and crystal fragments. A gemmological examination revealed that what he had discovered was green

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Corals are the product of tiny living beings which settled in enormous colonies in the depths of warm seas long before our time. The polyps, surrounded by a fleshy skin, excrete a carbonic substance from which the corals grow like trees and branches. These can attain a height of sixteen inches (40 cm), though the actual branches seldom exceed one and a half inches (4 cm). At the forks, they are

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This opaque, deep blue gemstone has a grand past. It was among the first gemstones to be worn as jewellery and worked on. At excavations in the ancient centres of culture around the Mediterranean, archaeologists have again and again found among the grave furnishings decorative chains and figures made of lapis lazuli – clear indications that the deep blue stone was already popular thousands of

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Fancy coloured diamonds are not a mass-market product such as those which are advertised everywhere and sold by numbers. They have more personality than that. Fancy coloured diamonds are almost as much fun as coloured gemstones! Like coloured gemstones, each one is different. They come in fabulously expensive pale pinks and blues, pale to bright yellows, oranges, greens, and all those brown

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The most sensational feature about this stone, is its surprising ability to change its colour. Green or bluish-green in daylight, alexandrite turns a soft shade of red, purplish-red or raspberry red in incandescent light. This unique optical characteristic makes it one of the most valuable gemstones of all, especially in fine qualities. Alexandrite is very scarce: this is due to its chemical

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It is in Mexico that the most significant fire opal deposits in the world lie. Rock strata containing opals run through the Mexican highlands, with their many extinct volcanoes. With a few exceptions, the gemstone, which lies hidden in cavities and crevices, is extracted in open-cast mines, the work giving rise to impressive canyons with walls up to 60 metres high and labyrinthine passages which

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Natural zircon today suffers on account of the similarity of its name to cubic zirconia, the laboratory-grown diamond imitation. Many people are unaware that there is a beautiful natural gemstone called zircon. Zircon occurs in a wide range of colours, but for many years the most popular was the colourless variety, which looks more like diamond than any other natural stone because of its

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The Viking mariners used thin pieces of it as the world's first polarising filter. Looking through an iolite lens, they were able to determine the exact position of the sun, and navigate their way safely to the New World and back. The property that made iolite so valuable to the Vikings is its extreme pleochroism. Iolite has different colours in different directions in the crystal. A cube cut

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With ametrine, you can have both gem colours for the price of one! Ametrine is especially inexpensive when you consider that it comes from only one mine in the world. The Anahi Mine in Bolivia is the major world producer of ametrine. The mine first became famous in the seventeenth century when a Spanish conquistador received it as a dowry on marrying a princess named Anahi from the Ayoreos tribe.

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By the term 'garnet', the specialist understands a group of more than ten different gemstones of similar chemical composition. It is true to say that red is the colour most often encountered, but the garnet also exists in various shades of green, a tender to intense yellow, a fiery orange and some fine earth-coloured nuances. The only colour it cannot offer is blue. Garnets are much sought-after

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The moonstone is characterised by an enchanting play of light. Indeed it owes its name to that mysterious shimmer which always looks different when the stone is moved and is known in the trade as 'adularescence'. In earlier times, people believed they could recognise in it the crescent and waning phases of the moon. Moonstones from Sri Lanka, the classical country of origin of the moonstone,

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In jewellery design as in fashion, colours look crisper against a background of black, and black and white always looks right. In fine jewellery, the black backdrop is often supplied by onyx, a black chalcedony quartz with a fine texture. Some onyx also displays white bands or ribbons against a black background. If the layers are even, this type of onyx can be carved into cameos. Onyx was very

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Dinosaurs have been more popular than ever since their starring role in the film Jurassic Park. A more surprising result of the film's popularity has been a worldwide surge in demand for amber jewellery. Although amber's use in adornment is probably as old as mankind itself, in recent times it has had a limited market. Of course, that was before millions of people saw dinosaur DNA extracted from

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Spinel is the great impostor of gemstone history: many famous rubies in crown jewels around the world are actually spinels. The most famous is the Black Prince's ruby, a magnificent 170-carat red spinel that now adorns the Imperial State Crown of England in the British Crown Jewels after a long history: Henry V even wore it on his battle helmet! The Timur ruby, a 361-carat red spinel now owned by

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Millions of years ago, deep in the bowels of our Earth, gemstones were created in innumerable variations. We are familiar with most of them, and indeed we have been so in most cases for thousands of years. Yet every now and again a previously unknown variant of a gem comes to light. One of these 'young' gemstones is kunzite, with its delicate pink hues, a gem which is seen more and more often

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The quality of pearls is judged by the orient, which is the soft iridescence caused by the refraction of light by the layers of nacre, and lustre, the reflectivity and shine of the surface. Fine pearls do not have any flaws or spots in the nacre: it has an even, smooth texture. Other factors which affect value are the regularity of the shape, size, and colour: rose tints are the most favoured.

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This gem, with its discreet yet rather greasy lustre, which comes in many fine nuances of green, but also in shades of white, grey, black, yellow, and orange and in delicate violet tones, has been known to Man for some 7000 years. In prehistoric times, however, it was esteemed rather more for its toughness, which made it an ideal material for weapons and tools. Yet as early as 3000 B.C. jade was

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The name emerald comes from the Greek 'smaragdos' via the Old French 'esmeralde', and really just means 'green gemstone'. Innumerable fantastic stories have grown up around this magnificent gem. The Incas and Aztecs of South America, where the best emeralds are still found today, regarded the emerald as a holy gemstone. However, probably the oldest known finds were once made near the Red Sea in

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Its light blue arouses feelings of sympathy, trust, harmony and friendship. Good feelings. Feelings which are based on mutuality and which prove their worth in lasting relationships. The blue of aquamarine is a divine, eternal colour, because it is the colour of the sky. However, aquamarine blue is also the colour of water with its life-giving force. And aquamarine really does seem to have

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Tourmalines are gems with an incomparable variety of colours. The reason, according to an old Egyptian legend, is that the tourmaline, on its long journey up from the centre of the Earth, passed over a rainbow. In doing so, it assumed all the colours of the rainbow. And that is why it is still referred to as the 'gemstone of the rainbow' today.

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Numerous legends and tales surround this colourful gemstone, which can be traced back in its origins to a time long before our memory, to the ancient dream time of the Australian aborigines. It is reported in their legends that the creator came down to Earth on a rainbow, in order to bring the message of peace to all the humans. And at the very spot, where his foot touched the ground, the stones

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For thousands of years, the ruby has been considered one of the most valuable gemstones on Earth. It has everything a precious stone should have: magnificent colour, excellent hardness and outstanding brilliance. In addition to that, it is an extremely rare gemstone, especially in its finer qualities.

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Blue is the main colour of the sapphire. Blue is also the favourite colour of some 50 per cent of all people, men and women alike. We associate this colour, strongly linked to the sapphire as it is, with feelings of sympathy and harmony, friendship and loyalty: feelings which belong to qualities that prove their worth in the long term – feelings in which it is not so much effervescent passion

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It is named after the East African state of Tanzania, the only place in the world where it has been found. Africa? Does anyone think of gemstones when they hear that name? Well they should, because Africa is a continent which provides the world with a multitude of truly magnificent gemstones, like tanzanite for example. On its discovery in 1967, it was enthusiastically celebrated by the

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The peridot is a very old gemstone, and one which has become very popular again today. It is so ancient that it can be found in Egyptian jewellery from the early 2nd millennium B.C.. The stones used at that time came from a deposit on a small volcanic island in the Red Sea, some 45 miles off the Egyptian coast at Aswan, which was not rediscovered until about 1900 and has, meanwhile, been

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Its colour is as unique as it is seductive, though in fact this gemstone of all gemstones is said to protect its wearer against seduction. The amethyst is extravagance in violet. For many thousands of years, the most striking representative of the quartz family has been a jewel coveted by princes both ecclesiastical and secular. Moses described it as a symbol of the

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The name is derived from the colour - the yellow of the lemon - , although the most sought-after stones have a clear, radiant yellowish to brownish red. Like all crystal quartzes, the citrine has a hardness of 7 on the Mohs scale and is thus, to a large extent, insensitive to scratches. It won't immediately take offence at being knocked about either, since its cleavage properties are non-existent

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