Sunday, January 10, 2010

Glorious Garnets

Garnet is a beautiful stone with great brilliance. It is a very hard and sturdy stone, which makes it ideal for use in all types of jewelry, including rings and bracelets, which often suffer more abuse than necklaces and earrings.

Humans discovered the beauty of garnets long ago. Garnet beads have been found in prehistoric graves. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used garnets in jewelry. During medieval times, garnet became known as the warrior stone. Soldiers carried it with them to ward off death and injury.

Today garnet is best known as the birthstone for January. The image of a brilliant, deep red stone may come to mind when you think of garnet. But red is not garnet’s only colour. It can also be yellow, brown, orange or green. In fact, garnets come in all colours except for blue.

The familiar deep red stones that many of us readily identify as garnets are pyrope garnets and almandite garnets. But if you prefer earthy tones from light golden honey to cognac to deep maple, hessonite garnet may be the stone for you. Spessartite can be found in beautiful shades of yellow, fiery orange, red and reddish browns. If green is more to your liking, perhaps hydrogrossular garnet (which is sometimes called Transvaal jade), tsavorite garnet or demantoid garnet would suit. Demantoid garnet, originally found only in Russia, was favoured by Carl Fabergé. Although demantoid garnet is now also found in Namibia, it remains the rarest and most expensive of the garnets.





































Featuring artisan handmade creations by the etsy starving artists jewelry team. SATeam members create handcrafted jewelry and beads. More information about our team and its current etsy shop owner members can be found at SATEAM.etsy.com.

13 comments:

Happileerving said...

Great post. I love garnet. The variations are almost endless. There is a garnet mine near us in the Adirondack Mountains that we plan to visit when it opens again in the Spring. I can hardly wait to see what it has in store, and they are supposed to have a great Rock Shop too!

Cat said...

I love garnets and their rich colors - thanks for this interesting read!

Nicole said...

Thanks for this - I only recently realised how many colours garnets came in, and it was interesting reading more about them! The items you chose are beautiful, too!

Unknown said...

Garnet is one of my all time favourite stones to use! Thanks for including my ring!

angie said...

Excellent information on a beautiful gem stone, and gorgeous pieces from SATeam.

Anonymous said...

I love garnets, thank you. Beautiful examples

Cindy said...

What a great article! I like how garnets can range from deep red to a light tan like those in the last pair of earrings. And what a fabulous selection of garnet jewelry from the SATeam!

Carole said...

I received as a gift an ornament studded with garnets and pearls. I had no idea garnet came in so many colors. My ornament is made with the traditional dark red. Thanks for the posting this information.

For You Jewellery Designs said...

I also had no idea that garnet came in so many differing colours to the 'traditional' red!
Thanks for a wonderfully informative post.
Cheers,
Tasha

Stockannette said...

Wow - all beautiful!

AMDesignsbyAngela said...

I love garnets...and no matter what color they always appear to have depth and saturation of color. Very nice post!

AMDesignsbyAngela said...

I love garnets...and no matter what color they always appear to have depth and saturation of color. Very nice post!

Leilani said...

Garnet is one of my favourite stones and it's not even my birthstone!