The Many Colors Of Garnets

You may only think of garnets as being red but there are different variations of the mineral that come in yellow, green, purple, brown, black, orange, pink and clear. The hardest to find is the blue garnet which just came on the scene in the 1990s. The blue garnet was discovered in Madagascar and because of the high amounts of vanadium, the colors vary from bluish green all the way to purple depending on the light.

There are actually six different types of garnet including: almandine, grossular, spessartine, uvarovite, pyrope and andradite. Garnets rank around 7. 5 on the Mohs scale of hardness with ten being the hardest stone.

Because of the wide variety of colors that garnets come in, its relatively hard makeup and the way it can be worked with by designers it is a favorite among jewelers. It is the birthstone for anyone who was born in January and it is the wedding anniversary stone for the second and sixth anniversaries.

While garnets are abundantly used in creating fine jewelry, it doesn't seem to enjoy the recognition of other stones. Partly it is because it is so easily accessible which in turn makes the price lower than many more rare and hard to find precious stones.

With red the most recognizable color some of the other varieties of garnets have their own unique characteristics - almandine comes in reddish brown to brown stones; uvarovite stones are green; grossular are responsible for the clear or colorless stones as well as orange and green versions; spessartines come in orange, pink and brown; and andradite garnets are mostly black, brown and green.

So when you see a garnet from now on, you may be able to spot the red ones right away. But don't limit yourself; there is a rainbow of colors that are all a part of the garnet family.

Other Handcrafted Gemstone Jewelry
Abalone	African Opal	Amazonite
Amber	Amethyst	Apatite
Aquamarine	Blue Topaz	Carnelian
Chalk Turquoise	Chrysoprase	Citrine
Coral	Crystal Quartz	Dendritic Quartz
Freshwater Pearls	Garnets	Green Gold Quartz
Jade	Lepidochrosite	Onyx
Peridot	Prehnite	Serpentine
Smoky Quartz

Birthstones by Month
January Birthstones	May Birthstones	September Birthstones
February Birthstones	June Birthstones	October Birthstones
March Birthstones	July Birthstones	November Birthstones
April Birthstones	August Birthstones	December Birthstones