Stones

Description of beautiful gemstones refleting the earth

Acquamarine, from the light blue of the sky to the deep blue of the sea, aquamarines shine over an extraordinarily beautiful range of mainly light blue colours. Aquamarine is a fascinatingly beautiful gemstone. Women the world over love it for its fine blue shades which can complement almost any skin or eye colour, and creative gemstone designers are inspired by it as they are by hardly any other gem, which enables them to create new artistic cuts again and again.

Agate, which is also Chalcedony is known by many forms. No gemstone is more creatively colored and striped by nature than agate, chalcedony quartz that forms in concentric layers in a wide variety of colors and textures. Each individual agate forms by filling a cavity in host rock. As a result, agate often is found as a round nodule, with concentric bands like the rings of a tree trunk. The bands sometimes look like eyes, sometimes fanciful scallops, or even a landscape with dendrite trees.

Amethyst is a purple variety of quartz (SiO₂) and owes its violet color to irradiation, iron impurities (in some cases in conjunction with transition element impurities), and the presence of trace elements, which result in complex crystal lattice substitutions. The hardness of the mineral is the same as quartz, thus it is suitable for use in jewelry.

Amber, usually thought of as a golden yellow colour but can also be found in shades of milky white, red-orange, grey, black and very rarely violet. Amber is found mainly in the baltic Sea, and is 40 to 55 million years old. Amber is superior in quality to any other resins. Nicknames the 'happy stone' because it is said that amber helps with depression.

Amazonite is a gemstone variety of green microcline, a feldspar mineral. It is named after the Amazon river in Brazil., though no deposits have been found there.

Because of its bright green color when polished, amazonite is sometimes cut and used as a gemstone, although it is easily fractured. For many years, the source of amazonite's color was a mystery.
Naturally, many people assumed the color was due to copper because copper compounds often have blue and green colors. More recent studies suggest that the blue-green color results from small quantities of lead and water in the feldspar.

Bloodstone (also called heliotrope) is green with distinctive red spots that resemble blood, giving this stone its name. The bloodstone was used to stop bleeding especially nosebleeds. The "classic" bloodstone is green chalcedony with red inclusions of iron oxide or red jasper. Sometimes the inclusions are yellow, in which case the mineral is given the name plasma.

Carnelian (also spelled Cornelian) is a brownish-red mineral which is commonly used as a semi-precious gemstone. Similar to carnelian is sard, which is generally harder and darker (the difference is not rigidly defined, and the two names are often used interchangeably). Both carnelian and sard are varieties of the silica mineral chalcedony colored by impurities of iro oxide. The color can vary greatly, ranging from pale orange to an intense almost-black coloration.

Chrysoprase is a very rare form of quartz. Its most striking attribute is its beautiful color, that of a green apple. However it should be noted that Chrysoprase also comes in a very dark green. Chrysoprase contains traces of nickel; the nickel that is found inside the Chrysoprase is what gives it its color.

Corals are marine animals in class Anthozoa of phylum Cnidaria typically living in compact colonies of many identical individual "polyps". The group includes the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton. A coral "head" is a colony of myriad genetically identical polyps. Each polyp is a spineless animal typically only a few millimeters in diameter and a few centimeters in length. A set of tentacles surround a central mouth opening. An exoskeleton is excreted near the base. Over many generations, the colony thus creates a large skeleton that is characteristic of the species. Individual heads grow by asexual reproduction of polyps.

Jade is an ornamental stone. The term jade is applied to two different metamorphic rocks that are made up of different silicate minerals:

Nephrite consists of a microcrystalline interlocking fibrous matrix of the calcium, magnesium-iron rich amphibole mineral series tremolite (calcium-magnesium)-ferroactinolite (calcium-magnesium-iron). The middle member of this series with an intermediate composition is called actinolite (the silky fibrous mineral form is one form of asbestos). The higher the iron content the greener the colour.

Jadeite is a sodium- and aluminium-rich pyroxene. The gem form of the mineral is a microcrystalline interlocking crystal matrix.

Garnet species are found in many colors including red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, pink and colorless.

The rarest of these is the blue garnet .

It changes color from blue-green in the daylight to purple in incandescent light, as a result of the relatively high amounts of vanadium. Other varieties of color-changing garnets exist. In daylight, their color ranges from shades of green, beige, brown, gray, and blue, but in incandescent light, they appear a reddish or purplish/pink color. Because of their color-changing quality, this kind of garnet is often mistaken for Alexandrite.

Labradorite , a feldspar mineral, is an intermediate to calcic member of the plagioclase series. The streak is white, like most silicates. The refractive index ranges from 1.559 to 1.573. Twinning is common. As with all plagioclase members the crystal system is triclinic and three directions of cleavage are present two of which form nearly right angle prisms. It occurs as clear, white to gray, blocky to lath shaped grains in common mafic igneous rocks such as basalt and gabbro, as well as in anorthosites.

Lapis lazuli is a relatively rare semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense blue color. Lapis lazuli is a rock, largely formed from the mineral lazurite.The main component of lapis lazuli is lazurite, a feldspathoid silicate mineral. Most lapis lazuli also contains calcite (white), sodalite (blue), and pyrite (metallic yellow). Other possible constituents: augite; diopside; enstatite; mica; hauynite; hornblende, and nosean. Some lapis lazuli contains trace amounts of the sulfur-rich löllingite variety geyerite.

Lapis lazuli usually occurs in crystalline marble as a result of contact metamorphism.

Malachite is a copper carbonate hydroxide mineral. This opaque, green banded mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often forms botryoidal, fibrous, or stalagmitic masses, in fractures and spaces, deep underground, where the water table and hydrothermal fluids provide the means for chemical precipitation. Individual crystals are rare but do occur as slender to acicular prisms. Pseudomorphs after more tabular or blocky azurite crystals also occur. Typical malachite is laminated and whether or not microbes intervene in its formation is unknown.

Moonstone is a sodium potassium aluminium silicate. Moonstone is composed of two feldspar species, orthoclase and albite. The two species are intermingled. Then, as the newly formed mineral cools, the intergrowth of orthoclase and albite separates into stacked, alternating layers. When light falls between these thin, flat layers, it scatters in many directions producing the phenomenon called adularescence.

Can be numerous colors, including blue, grey, white, pink, green and brown

Onyx is a banded variety of chalcedony. The colors of its bands range from white to almost every color (save some shades, such as purple or blue). Commonly, specimens of onyx contain bands of black and/or white. Sardonyx is a variant in which the colored bands are sard (shades of red) rather than black. Black onyx is perhaps the most famous variety, but is not as common as onyx with colored bands. Artificial treatments have been used since ancient times to produce both the black color in "black onyx" and the reds and yellows in sardonyx. Most "black onyx" on the market is artificially colored.

Opal is a hydrated amorphous form of silica. The internal structure of precious opal makes it diffract light; depending on the conditions in which it formed it can take on many colors. Precious opal ranges from clear through white, gray, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, magenta, rose, pink, slate, olive, brown, and black. Of these hues, the reds against black are the most rare, whereas white and greens are the most common. It varies in optical density from opaque to semi-transparent. For gemstone use, its natural color is often enhanced by placing thin layers of opal on a darker underlying stone, like basalt. Common opal, called "potch" by miners, does not show the display of color exhibited in precious opal.

Pearl is a hard object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusc. Just like the shell of a clam, a pearl is made up of calcium carbonate in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers. The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth, but many other shapes of pearls (baroque pearls) occur. The finest quality natural pearls have been highly valued as gemstones and objects of beauty for many centuries, and because of this, the word pearl has become a metaphor for something very rare, fine, admirable, and valuable.Earrings and necklaces can also be classified on the grade of the color of the pearl. While white, and more recently black, saltwater pearls are by far the most popular, other color tints can be found on pearls from the oceans. Pink, blue, champagne, green, black and even purple saltwater pearls can be encountered, but to collect enough of these rare colors to form a complete string of the same size and same shade can take years.

Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, after feldspar. Pure quartz, traditionally called rock crystal (sometimes called clear quartz), is colorless and transparent (clear) or translucent, and has often been used for hardstone carvings, such as the Lothair Crystal. Common colored varieties include citrine, rose quartz, amethyst, smoky quartz, milky quartz, and others. Quartz goes by an array of different names. The most important distinction between types of quartz is that of macrocrystalline (individual crystals visible to the unaided eye) and the microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline varieties (aggregates of crystals visible only under high magnification). The cryptocrystalline varieties are either translucent or mostly opaque, while the transparent varieties tend to be macrocrystalline. Chalcedony is a cryptocrystalline form of silica consisting of fine intergrowths of both quartz, and its monoclinic polymorph moganite. Other opaque gemstone varieties of quartz, or mixed rocks including quartz, often including contrasting bands or patterns of color, are agate, sard, onyx, carnelian, heliotrope, and jasper .

Sardonyx is a variant in which the colored bands are sard (shades of red) rather than black. Black onyx is perhaps the most famous variety, but is not as common as onyx with colored bands. Artificial treatments have been used since ancient times to produce both the black color in "black onyx" and the reds and yellows in sardonyx. Most "black onyx" on the market is artificially colored.

Sapphirine is a rare mineral, a silicate of magnesium and aluminium (with iron as a major impurity). Named for its sapphire-like colour, sapphirine is primarily of interest to researchers and collectors: well-formed crystals are treasured and occasionally cut into gemstones.

Sapphirine has also been synthesized for experimental purposes via a hydrothermal process. Typical colours range from light to dark sapphire blue, bluish to brownish green, green, and bluish or greenish gray to black; less common colours include yellow, pale red, and pink to purplish pink. Sapphirine is relatively hard (7.5 on Mohs scale), usually transparent to translucent, with a vitreous lustre.

Sapphire is a gemstone variety of the mineral corundum, an aluminium oxide. Trace amounts of other elements such as iron, titanium, chromium, copper, or magnesium can give corundum blue, yellow, purple, orange, or a greenish color. Chromium impurities in corundum yield a pink or red tint, the latter being called a ruby.

Synthetic Sapphire, In 1902 the French chemist Auguste Verneuil developed a process for producing synthetic sapphire crystals. In the Verneuil process, named for him, fine alumina powder is added to an oxyhydrogen flame, and this is directed downward against a mantle. The alumina in the flame is slowly deposited, creating a teardrop shaped "boule" of sapphire material.

Turquoise is an opaque, blue-to-green mineral that is a hydrous phosphate of copper and aluminium, with the chemical. It is rare and valuable in finer grades and has been prized as a gem and ornamental stone for thousands of years owing to its unique hue. In recent times, turquoise, like most other opaque gems, has been devalued by the introduction of treatments, imitations, and synthetics onto the market.