If you ask me “what is the one thing that I like most about jewellery – I would say “color”!! Jewelry without color does not appeal to me and I am huge fan of colored stones.As its been a long time since I posted information about gemstones in the blog I am going to do a small, seven part series on colored gemstones.
There are numerous colored stones – both precious as well as semiprecious and they are all extremely beautiful. But I am going to choose 7 colors – the 7 colors of the Rainbow and discuss the various gemstones in those colors.
A list of gemstones in Red color
1. Ruby: Considered as royalty among gemstones; more beautiful and more expensive than diamonds, rubies are the stones of passion, strength and desire. Named after its hue (ruber), rubies are made up of corundum, a crystalline form of aluminum oxide. You could figure out the origin (location where the ruby was mined) based on its color – Myanmar,- pure reds, Vietnam – pinkish rubies, Sri Lanka- soft pastel pinkish reds, Thailand – dark red to burgundy, Kenya with translucent stones with juicy pure reds, Madagascar with pure transparent reds; but it is not conclusive. Rubies showing no signs of heating are very rare and command a premium as most rubies are heated almost to 2,000 degrees in order to maximize the red and remove secondary colors of blue and brown. This heat is also said to improve their clarity.
2. Spinel Rubies : Often confused with rubies, Balas rubies are rose tinted spinels that belong to aluminium section of the larger spinel family. Named after the location they were found, the Badakshan province (Afghanistan), they are indeed similar to rubies as they have similar hardness and durability, vivid color, and brilliance. In addition to beautiful rich reds, spinel can be found in a range of colors like blue, green, yellow or colorless.
3. Garnet: Named after the pomegranate (a granatum), garnet is a brialliant, durable and affordable gemstone. It is a group of six closely related minerals: almandine, pyrope, grossular, spessartite, andradite, and uvarovite. Though green (Tsavorite, demantoid) and blue garnets are available, red and wine colors (purplish red to pink rhodolite and sunset orange malaya), are the most popular ones. Garnets are said to protect their owners from nightmares and safeguard them from accidents far from home.
4. Zircon: Though Zircons are generally considered as diamond alternatives, natural zircons are ancient materials on Earth which can be colorless, green, blue, yellow, brown, orange or red. Zircon is not to be confused with Cubic zirconia (discovered in 1937) a man-made compound of zirconium, oxygen and yttrium, which can be dyed in any color.
Refer here for more information on gemstones
That’s it for now, come back to learn all about Orange gemstones.If you have any more information to share about gemstones, please share them as comments and I will include them in the post.
I hope you find it interesting
Cheers
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