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 January
(Garnet)
- Ranges from deep red to rose to lavender in color.
- Moh's scale of hardness 7-7.5*
Garnet jewelry is well known for its deep, blood-red color.
This is the birthstone for January. While garnet jewelry is
often recognized by its red color, it is actually available
in many other colors and varieties. The word garnet is really
a catch-all phrase for a group of minerals within the garnet
family, almandine being the most common in garnet jewelry.
Other varieties are also used in making garnet jewelry, which
may include: pyrope, rhodolite, spessartine, andradite, grossular
and uvaroite. Each variety is slightly different, may contain
traces of other varieties and may be more rare. Recently,
garnet jewelry made with the Tsavorite garnet has become quite
popular. This gemstone is from the grossular family and is
used in garnet jewelry because it offers a beautiful emerald-like,
intense green color. It actually takes its name from the botanical
name for the gooseberry, R. grossularia. This is a nice alternative
for those who do not care for red tones normally used in garnet
jewelry.
* Mohs Scale of Hardness
The Mohs Scale of Hardness measures a substance's hardness,
that is, how resistant that substance is to being scratched.
This scale was invented by Austrian mineralogist Friedrich Mohs
(1773-1839).
In the Mohs scale, one substance is harder than another if it
can scratch it. The scale ranges from 1 to 10. For example,
a diamond (hardness = 10) will scratch garnet (hardness = 6.5-7.5),
but not the other way around, so a diamond is harder than garnet.
http://www.allaboutjewels.com/jewel/pages/mohsscale.shtml
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