"Garnet" is a name used for several similar minerals,
also known as the "garnet group," rather than a single mineral. The group
consists of six major varieties: Pyrope, spessartite, almandite, andradite,
grossular and uvarovite. In the past few years, an important sub-variety, called
rhodolite, has been recognized. With a composition between pyrope and almandine,
and a beautiful color from pink to pinkish violet, it has become one of the most
popular garnets for quality gold jewelry. Pyrope, usually purple to
deep red in color, sometimes closely resembles ruby (one type from southwestern
U.S. is even called "Arizona ruby"), and is the type most often seen in European
and antique jewelry. Almandite is the brownish red garnet most
commonly used garnet seen in jewelry today, and satisfies the jewelry trade's
demand for an inexpensive and readily available red
gemstone. Andradite variety only has one type, demantoid,
that has been of significant importance in jewelry. Yellow green to deep green
in color, with the brilliance of a diamond, it was extensively used as small
stones in animal lapel pins in the early part of the 20th century. They are
normally small, with sizes over one carat extremely rare, although a new find in
Namibia may offer a new supply of larger stones in this most expensive of the
garnets. Grossular garnets are the most colorful, occuring in every
color except blue. Green grossular, found in quantity in East Africa, has been
named "tsavorite"
and is the most valuable, and most popular, of the grossulars used to make
jewelry. Spessartite is an uncommon yellow-orange to reddish-brown
garnet, which was largely disregarded as a jewelry stone until a bright orange
variety was recently found in Africa. Since then, it has been touted as
"mandarin garnet," the most popular new addition to the garnet gem market since
tsavorite. Uvarovite, the final member of the garnet group, is deep
green in color, extremely rare and, according to the literature, the only cut
gems in existence are very tiny.
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