Red Garnets and Extinction

[Richard M.]

I have one cut and several very purple almandite garnet crystals from Orissa (eastern India). The garnets are sometimes marketed as grape garnets. I was trying for an intense but brilliant purplish red garnet. The cut grape garnet I have, finished at about 1.8 cts, but even with perfect cutting angles, it is inky dark. That crystal could have finished with good cutting angles at perhaps 3 cts. I was trying to duplicate my success of the 1.08 ct red pyrope, but even at 1.8 cts, the grape garnet failed the tone test. It isn’t even worth trying on my other grape garnets crystals. They have beautiful colors in transmitted light, but cutting them is hopeless.

I have a lot of experience with Orissa "grape" almandines. There's tremendous tone and hue variation and the key is selecting rough that can be usefully cut. As with any darker-toned material, size is also a consideration due to greater light absorption the longer the light path within the gem. Only rough with very dark tone is hopeless though.

Just a comment about chrome pyropes. Unless you have a secret source for fine rough, large and clean chrome pyrope is very scarce and the yield is usually quite small for fine color. I've worked with larger chrome pyropes from South Africa and Arizona and they tend to be both very dark in tone and included. While the images you posted are beautiful I wonder if you could easily supply more such stones of equal quality? I surely could not although finer small rounds up to about 4 mm. are readily available.

The unending quest for fine natural red gems the equal of ruby in color at "reasonable" (usually meaning cheap) price is futile. No garnets (with the exception of chrome pyropes) are true red. They have secondaries of orange, violet, brown, purple etc. often accompanied by dark tone. I appreciate them for what they are. I agree with you that emerald cuts are usually the best for showing off red-purple garnets with medium-dark tone.

Richard M. (Rick Martin)

 

[zeolite]

Hi Richard! Sounds like you found grape garnets of considerably better tone than I have. No, I can’t supply another single crystal or gem of this quality.

But let me point a problem associated with selling exceptional examples of a common gem: Suppose I wanted to sell my 1.08 ct chrome pyrope. If it were offered at 2 times or 3 times the (extremely low) price of a common red garnet, it would probably sell. But suppose I thought it was worth 5 times or 10 times the per carat price of a lowly red garnet. Hypothetical conversation:

Garnet seller: I want this price (10X) for this exceptional gem.

Garnet buyer: That is an outrageous price!

Garnet seller: Yes but look at the wonderful intensity and brilliance! Any day of the week, you can go to a ruby seller and find 20 rubies of no better color than this! And each ruby would sell for 4 times the per carat price I am asking for this garnet. Show me where, in a 5 year period, you can find ONE garnet of this intensity, brilliance, and quality of cutting?

Garnet buyer: But it’s a garnet! (emphasis on the disdainful word “garnet”; disdain - to regard or treat with haughty contempt; despise).

So TL, gems of this quality do exist, and this is why you’ll never see one in the garnet market!