Garnet 0.42 Ct 4.3 mm El Hoyazo
50,00€
Gem: Garnet
Weight: 0.42 ct
Size: 4.3 mm
Origin: Níjar (Spain)
Treatments: None
Clarity: VVS1 Very very small inclusions
Misc: Garnet from the La Hoya volcanic crater deposit in Almería, Spain, where very few gems of sufficient quality for cutting are found. This is the highest quality garnet found at this deposit. Small size.
Gemological certificate included: with a photo of the rough crystal and the cutting diagram.
Natural garnets
Garnets are a set of closely related minerals forming a group, with gemstones in almost every color. Thousands of years ago, red garnet necklaces adorned the necks of Egypt’s pharaohs, and were entombed with their mummified corpses as prized possessions for the afterlife. In ancient Rome, signet rings with carved garnets were used to stamp the wax that secured important documents. The garnet group of related mineral species offers gems of every hue, including fiery red pyrope, vibrant orange spessartine, and rare intense-green varieties of grossular and andradite. Red garnets have a long history, but modern gem buyers can pick from a rich palette of garnet colors: greens, oranges, 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 rarer and needs rarer rock chemistries and conditions to form.
El Hoyazo
El Hoyazo (Níjar, Almería, Spain) is the crater of an ancient submarine volcano formed around 10 million years ago. After the volcano became inactive, coral reefs developed along the crater rim—now preserved as fossils. Erosion and sea-level changes have kept this geological structure remarkably well presserved.
Inside the crater you can find a variety of minerals and crystals such as sillimanite, biotite, cordierite, cristobalite and garnets. These crystals come from ancient, deep rocks that the rising magma incorporated and carried to the surface.
El Hoyazo garnets: what they are like?
Most crystals are small garnets ranging from 1 mm to 1.5 cm (mainly almandine/andradite types). They often occur as well-formed cubic crystals—octahedra, rhombic dodecahedra, trapezohedra, or combinations—typically deep red, but commonly fractured and included. Because of their hardness and overall low quality, El Hoyazo garnets have historically been used for abrasives.
They can be found embedded in, or released from, their host rock: dacites, fine-grained volcanic rocks formed from relatively acidic, viscous magmas.
Garnet is the birthstone for January and the gem for the second anniversary.
If you’re not completely satisfied, you can return the gemstone
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