Knowledge
Garnets have a long and ancient history, and over time have been revered for possessing protective powers. A gemstone that appears in a variety of colours, garnets are incredibly versatile and can be seen decorating jewels across civilisations.
Gemstones
Garnet in the Ancient World
Deriving from the Latin word 'granum', meaning grainy, the earliest record of garnet being used in jewellery dates back to the Bronze Age, circa 3000-3100 BC. In ancient Egypt garnet was used in amulets and talismans that were buried with the dead to protect them in the afterlife and in ancient Greece and Rome, garnets were worn in signet rings, often carved with intaglios.
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Bejewelling Royalty
Legend suggests that King Solomon wore garnets into battle as he believed they would give him luck in the fight. More recently, garnets decorated many royal garments, including those of Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Victoria and the wives of the Russian Tsars. The imperial Russian jeweller Fabergé created detailed and unique designs specifically for the vivid green Demantoid garnet.
Garnet Varieties
Garnets are a group of minerals which come in many different varieties, including almandine, pyrope, spessartite and demantoid, to name just a few. These all share the same crystal structure, but differ in chemical composition and colour.
Garnets come in a wide spectrum of all colours, with blue being the most rare. Almandine garnets, the most common, come in a reddish-purple colour, pyrope garnets are a reddish-orange, spessartite and hessonite garnets are yellow-orange-brown and green varieties include tsvaorite and demantoid.
Garnets are a durable gemstone and measure a 7 to 7.5 on the Mohs scale of hardness.
Demantoid Garnets
Demantoid garnets are one of the more rare varieties of garnet and can be distinguished by a distinctive intense green to yellow-green hue, caused by the presence of chromium in its chemical makeup.
Demantoid garnets have two properties which make them special, not only among the green garnets, but amongst all gems. The first is its strong fire, also known as dispersion, or the splitting of light into its individual spectral colours. Demantoid garnets are one of the few gems which possess this property to such a great extent, with a refractive index of 1.880 to 1.889, even higher than that of a diamond. In fact, the name derives from the Flemish word ‘demant’ meaning diamond, due to its diamond-like lustre and dispersion.
The other unusual feature, one that is completely unique to demantoid garnets, are ‘horsetail’ inclusions. Whilst not found in every specimen, this distinctive internal feature is composed of curved needle-like tubular crystals radiating from a single point, resembling a horse’s tail.
Most demantoid garnets are small in size, with large ones being extremely rare. Once cut, only a few stones weigh more than two carats, with most of them hardly exceeding one carat.
Demantoids were only discovered in the mid-19th century, in the Ural Mountains of Russia. It quickly became a coveted gem, first in Russia within the court of Tsar Nicholas I, and then they spread in popularity to Europe and America. The eminent Russian court jeweller Fabergé used the stone in many of his imperial commissions, as did prominent jewellers such as Tiffany and Boucheron.
After the Russian revolution the stone fell from fashion, mainly due to a cessation of mining the gem in the newly established USSR. Due to the fall of the Soviet system in the early 1990s, coupled with the discovery of other sources of the stone, the most significant being in Namibia in 1996, demantoid garnets, though still extremely rare, are experiencing a renaissance of appreciation.
At Berganza, our collection of garnet jewels date back to ancient times with examples of roman intaglio rings, through to incredible pieces from the medieval era to more comparatively contemporary pieces from the Georgian, Victorian and Art Deco eras.
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Garnet rings, brooches, bracelets, necklaces and earrings can all be found in our showroom and on our website. For those looking for a beautiful piece of history and a much coveted gemstone, our garnet collection has it all!
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The price of a garnet can vary depending on its size and variety. For those of the rare demantoid variety, the value can be exceptionally more.
A garnet is a group of minerals coming in many different varieties and colours, yet all sharing the same crystal structure.
Garnets are categorised into over ten varieties, and come in various shades of green, purple, red, orange and yellow. Dark, warm hued red garnets of the pyrope variety were particularly popular in eighteenth and nineteenth century jewellery.
Yes, garnets are the birthstone for January.