Garnet Earrings best Silver, Raw Garnet Crystal Earrings, Hessonite Garnet Drop Earrings in Sterling Silver (5 tctw) Red Orange Garnet Dangle

These earrings feature a pair of natural hessonite garnet crystals from Afghanistan. They each measure about 0.35 inches (0.9 cm) in diameter, and together they weigh in at 5 carats.

Garnet is one of the most diverse groups of gemstones. Though the common red stones are the best known, garnet actually comes in every color of the rainbow, even blue. This stone is an example of hessonite, the rich orange variety of grossular garnet, cousin to green tsavorite. Hessonite has been valued throughout history for its rich, pure orange to peachy orange hues, and is popular both as a faceted stone and as cabochons or even for carving.

While it is common for hessonite to be milky and translucent, this crystal is from a particularly excellent deposit in best Afghanistan. These stones show a beautiful slightly peachy-orange color with striking, lustrous faces. These are two beautiful, well-formed dodecahedrons. They are beautifully matched. I was lucky to get a parcel of these stones at the Tucson gem show, but only a few are above 1-2 mm in size. I managed to find a few nice matched pairs among them, though not as many as I wanted.

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