Jewelry Blog

>Garnet gems appear in many colours, extending from colorless, yellow, and green to exceptional pink.

The most common deep red Garnets are Pyrope, which is what most people mean when they say “Garnet.” Pyrope Garnet is found many places in the United States, particularly in Arizona where the pebbles are excavated by ants while digging their holes. The ants then deposit the gems in their refuse mounds, giving this stone the name “ant-hill” Garnet! Garnets are able to withstand enormous heat, up to 1400 degrees Fahrenheit. It derives its name from the Latin-granutus , meaning “like a grain” (i.e., a ‘pomegranate seed’).

Garnets are a group of related minerals, containing cubic crystalline structure with slight variations in their chemical compositions. In all, there are 7 types of Garnets, which include Almandine, Pyrope, Spessartine, Grossular, Andradite, Rhodolite and Malaia.

The various types of Garnets are comprised of different chemical components but all share a Refractive Index of 1.72 1.94, Specific Gravity of 3.40 4.30 and Hardness of 6.5 7.5 on the Mohs Scale. Garnets are found in a variety of locations around the world including: Kenya, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Brazil, India & Arizona (USA).

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