Gorgeous Garnets, a January Joy

Garnet Gemstone, Oval Cut

When most people think of red jewels, the ruby springs to mind. But there is another totally natural and even more beautiful stone, which is the birthstone of January, the garnet.  This stone is more accurately called blood red than is the ruby as the most well known garnets with color range from cherry pyropes to dark red to wine, and from brownish cinnamon to almost black red almandine depending on the location they come from (the best come from Africa).  The semi-precious garnet is usually reasonably priced so you can get a real faceted stone for clarity rather than have to get a lab-created version as you would with ruby.  True rubies are cloudy and very expensive since they are a precious stone.  Garnets on the other hand are usually priced within most people’s budgets.

Not everyone born in January likes their red garnet birthstone.  Fortunately for them the garnet comes in other colors as well, although usually for a higher price than the red versions.  The lighter ranges of reds are about the same price as the darker reds.  For instance the rhodolite garnet ranges from pink to raspberry colors depending on where it comes from and the color of metal it is set in.  Put it in silvertone and it appears light to hot pink.  In yellow or rose gold, rhodolite might look more purplish. Recently a true purple garnet was found.  It is trademarked as "plum" by some on-line shopping sites.

For those that want to steer away from red, there are the more rare orange, gold, and yellow garnets called mandarin, hessonite, and spessartite.  For those who love green, try the mint-colored tsavorite (T is silent) which rivals green sapphires, or the almost emerald-color but much more pricey demantoid, or the barely-known bright chrome-rich uvarovite.  For the truly exotic, try the extremely expensive blue or color-change garnet that goes from blue to purple in the massi garnet line or the bekily (video) which is green-blue to magenta.   There may be other colors as well since mines close and new discoveries in gemstones are made.  So if you are a fan of garnet stones, check the web or jewelry shows often.