Garnet- Granatum, respectively pomegranate. But we are definitely not just talking about red…
There are several garnets, this is a group of minerals that includes: pyrope, almandine, spessartine, grossular and andradite. Their name probably comes from the Latin grannum, which means grain, because they often occur in the form of crystals forming up to 24 areas.
Garnets have a glassy, greasy to diamond sheen. They do not have cleavability, but they have detachment, the fracture is uneven to coniferous. The most famous is the pyrope named after the Greek terms for fire, it is known in our country as the Czech garnet, it is blood red and relatively clean – without inclusions. Pieces larger than 7 mm are considered rare. A large number of them are mined along with diamonds in the Kimberley and De Beers mines in South Africa. Its interesting variety of rhodolite comes to the fore in jewelry.
The most common of the grenade group is almandine. The name is from Alabanda, Turkey, where it has been sanded since ancient times. It is most often red to purple-red, or black. It can form crystals weighing more than 4 kg. It is often cracked and contains more inclusions. Another is Spessartin, which is named after the Bavarian town of Spessart. The crystals tend to be light yellow to orange. It is seldom clean and mixed with almandine. One of the largest comes from the Virginia Rutheford Mine in the United States, weighing 6,720 carats (1.34 kg). Grosular was named after the gooseberry color. The crystals are usually white, pink, cream, orange, red, honey-yellow to brown. The red-brown variety is called hessonite.
The last to be mentioned is andradite. It has a yellowish color, which is called topazolite and yellowish-green or emerald-green, demantoid. Furthermore, andradite has a brown-red, brown-yellow or gray color. Garnets are found in the jewelry of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. The most beautiful garnet jewelry from the largest Czech garnets was owned by Baroness Ulrik von Levetzow, the love of Johan W. Goethe. Czech garnets appear in Georgian, Victorian jewelry.
