January

Although garnet is commonly associated with the color red, these gemstones can be found in almost any color and are popular choices for jewelry of all types. That’s excellent news if you’re in the market for this January birthstone. The garnet family is one of the most complex in the gem world. It’s not a single species but rather consists of several species and varieties. This gem listing will focus on qualities common to all garnets and offer a brief overview of their diversity.

Some believe that garnets are a protective stone, shielding the wearer from injury. This made them particularly popular amongst warriors and royalty. Occasionally associated with life-giving blood, red-variety garnets are also connected to vitality, love, and light.

Depending on the type of garnet, you can choose from red, purplish, green, yellow, and orange options. It is not uncommon to find large garnet crystals with vibrant hues and clear transparency.

Although garnet is commonly associated with the color red, these gemstones can be found in almost any color and are popular choices for jewelry of all types. That’s excellent news if you’re in the market for this January birthstone. The garnet family is one of the most complex in the gem world. It’s not a single species but rather consists of several species and varieties. This gem listing will focus on qualities common to all garnets and offer a brief overview of their diversity.

Identifying garnets is complicated. In the last fifty years, several new blends have been discovered in East Africa. There’s no reason to believe that all the possible blends have been discovered. We don’t know what the future holds for gemologists.

Garnets share common properties at the molecular level despite considerable variations. For those not scientifically inclined, here’s a visualization that, while not scientifically rigorous, may help illustrate this. If your hand were a model of a garnet molecule, all garnets would share the arrangement of atoms represented by the palm. However, the atoms represented by your fingers are interchangeable. In other words, different atoms can reside on your fingers, while the palm remains the same. Anytime you change the chemistry, you have a different species. Change the atoms of a finger and you have a different species, even though the structure and related properties remain the same (or very nearly so).

In recent decades, color change garnets have been discovered that turn blue in artificial light. In the late 1990s, blue garnets that are red with purple flashes under incandescent light were discovered in Madagascar. These color change stones are a pyrope-spessartite blend. Some Idaho garnets show a strong color shift from red to purplish red. These are an almandine-pyrope mix.