Image via Etsy

Garnet is the January birthstone for jewelry. So Happy Birthday – oh and Happy New Year too by the way. 🙂

There isn’t a lot known about garnets; they tend to fly under the radar, compared to their more high profile colour cousins, the ruby.

Garnet comes in two varieties, Almandine and Rhodolite. Almandine garnet is typically a dark red stone in colour, and is often confused with ruby, as it bears similar colour tones. Rhodolite garnet is lighter in colour, and has more purplish tones. At StyleRocks, we use the Almandine garnet because it provides more vibrancy and richness of colour.

Almandine garnet is mined in Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Malawi, Brazil, Madagascar and Kenya. Rhodolite – named after the mountain rhododendron (a magenta coloured flower) – was first found in the mountains of North Carolina in the US in 1882.

In terms of being used today in jewellery, garnet is still a very popular adornment for for jewellery, being valued for its affordability especially when compared to rubies. The advantages of using garnet over rubies are not only availability but also size; its very tricky to find rubies in large sizes, so often garnet is used instead.

In this picture, we see Kate Beckinsale wearing some gorgeous garnet earrings: Note the beautiful cabochon (smooth) shape of the garnets in the earring setting, they look amazing.

Image source

Garnets do come in other colours as well: although you may have heard of other names such as:

Spessartite – orange

Tsavorite – emerald green

Andradite – black

Hessonite – brown

Tapazolite – yellow

Which colour of garnet would you choose?

Ms Gingham says: Love the garnet!!!

About Pascale: Pascale Helyar-Moray, Founder and Director of StyleRocks has fourteen years of financial services experience as a marketing and communications professional working with blue chip companies in Australia and the UK. Maternity leave forced her to re-examine her career options and in looking for a business she could run from home, created StyleRocks in order to harness her lifelong passion for jewellery.