Tag: spessartite garnet

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Spessartite Garnet

Also known as “Spessartine” this lively garnet is usually orange to reddish-brown and is somewhat rare. Most spessartites especially orange ones, have eye-visible inclusions.
Manganese is the element in Spessartiet that produces the orange color. Spessartite has been found in Brazil, Burma, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, and the USA (San Diego County, CA). The most important sources today are Nigeria and northeast Namibia. Spessartites are not enhanced by any method. Hardness is 7 – 7.5 on the Mohs scale.

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Garnet, January Birthstone

Garnets are a group of silicate minerals that have been used since the Bronze Age as gemstones and abrasives. All species of garnets possess similar physical properties and crystal forms but differ in chemical composition. The different species are Pyrope, Almandine, Umba River, Spessartine, Grossular, Uvarovite and Andradite. Garnet is 6.5 – 7.5 on the Mohs hardness scale.

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Spectacular Spessartite Garnet

Spessartine (or spessartite) is named after Spessart in Bavaria, Germany, the type locality of the mineral. Spessartine of an orange-yellow has been called Mandarin garnet and is found in Madagascar. Violet-red spessartine are found in rhyolites in Colorado and Main.

Spessartite, as other garnets, has a hardnes of 6.5-7 on the Mohs hardness scale.

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Garnet, January Birthstone

Garnet is January’s birthstone, and the gem for the second wedding anniversary. It is available in a rich palette of colors: greens, oranges, yellows, pinkish oranges, deeply saturated purplish reds, and even some blues.

Red garnet is one of the most common and widespread of gems. But not all garnets are as abundant as the red ones. A green garnet, tsavorite, is rare and needs rarer rock chemistries and conditions to form.

Demantoid is a rare and famous green garnet, spessartite is an orange garnet, rhodolite is a beautiful purple-red, andradite and grossular are a yellowish green color.

All garnets have essentially the same crystal structure, but they vary in chemical composition. There are more than twenty garnet categories, called species, but only five are commercially important as gems. Those five are pyrope, almandine, spessartite, grossular, and andradite. A sixth, uvarovite, is a green garnet that usually occurs as crystals too small to cut. It’s sometimes set as clusters in jewelry. Many garnets are chemical mixtures of two or more garnet species.