Pomegranate

The name "pomegranate" is not so much a particular stone, but rather to a group of minerals with the same chemical composition and cubic crystal lattice. Most garnets found in jewelry, red, or brown-red color, they are inexpensive, but they can be quite beautiful. The best examples of painted and chromium-called "pyropes" color close to Rubin. Jewelers typically do not specify whether or pyrope garnet almandine, or even any kind, because it has little effect on the value of the stone. In the past, popular attractive tangerine orange grenades spessartite, known as the "mandarin garnets."

Grenades are rarely the subject of forgery, because the are cheap and of themselves. For red garnet crystals can be taken, made of red glass, designed to simulate the ruby. It is worth noting that the grenades are often subject to numerous defects and crystalline inclusions. Their constants, in particular the index of refraction, are too broad to be useful lover, in addition, they are, like crystals, have a single refraction.

However green garnet - a rare and valuable stone. Qualitative demantoidny grenades variety of andradite, can be very attractive due to the level of dispersion, higher than that of diamond, because of which demonstrates the great stone "fire" and the game. His best samples have shiny grass-green, but confusing them with emerald impossible because of a yellowish hue, and high gloss. Green garnets, which first appeared on the market in the second half of the XIX century, the mining in the Urals, and often they can be found in the products, dating from about 1895 up to the First World War.

Best examples can cost several thousand dollars per carat, but their size is rarely more than 5 carats, most of these stones are small. Their characteristic inclusions called I-it's brown asbestos fibers. It is for them the easiest to distinguish this stone, because the index of refraction of demantoid (1.89) is beyond the scale of the refractometer. Only some of the stones by color may seem like an expressive bright green demantoids, peridot close to the samples with a pale color, but he has a strong double refraction and read the index of refraction 1.67.

However, remember that some artificial grenades specially painted chrome to mimic demantoids, but these stones do not have specific defects, and they almost never occur in jewelry. Not long ago, in Kenya, in the National Park Ttsavo was open field, which produces attractive green grossular garnets, they are distinguished by a shade of green foliage, but they are not characteristic of demantoid fire and they are relatively soft and susceptible to abrasion. The cost of these stones varies greatly. They are easily distinguishable by refractometer (refractive index - 1.74).