Eos Silver

Garnet

It is from the Latin word for grain, “granum” that the garnet receives its name. There are a number of members of this group of gemstones that all share a similar chemical nature and crystal structure. The most notable of which are the following:
- Pyrope (red, often with a slight brown tone)
- Almandine (red, often with a touch of violet)
- Spessartine (orange to auburn)
- Grossular (colourless, green, brown, yellow)
- Uwarowite (emerald green)
- Andradite (black, yellow, green, brown)
This group also contains so-called hybrids as, for example, rhodolite which is a hybrid of almandine and pyrope, or the Malaya garnet being a hybrid of spessartine and pyrope.
Garnets , however, are popularly known as almandines or “red carbuncles”. The term almandine itself is derived from the town of “Alabanda” which today is in the Turkish province of Aydin and was renowned for being the principle centre for the cutting, polishing and trading of garnets.
The colour spectrum of almandine goes from red to a reddish-violet whereby the latter variant is the most desirable and also the more costly of the two. The transition between pure and hybrid crystal types is a fluid one. Consequently, the violet-red of the pyrope almandine is attributed to rhodolite. However, there are also garnets of pure red which can, in chemical terms, be attributed to rhodolite. Only laboratory analysis can determine the exact classification.
Apart from turmaline, garnets are the only type of gemstones that cannot be synthetically produced. Since heat treatment does not have an effect on purity or colour these gemstones are untreated and as a result particularly attractive.