The Gryphon's Feather Studio: Questions about Stones: gemstone primer

Since launching The Wishmonger, I've gotten quite a few questions about gemstones from friends and readers- questions about what stones are gemstones, sources to purchase stones, the cost of stones, and how I determine the prices for my jewelry. I'm going to do my best to answer over the next couple of posts.

I have done quite a bit of reading regarding gemstones. Being the ever-nerd that I am, my reading has included some books and manuscripts that date back to the 1600s found in a wonderful online library of rare antique books on gemstones on the Farlang website.

Many of the metaphysical and healing properties attributed to gemstones and precious metals, which are often thought of as concepts created by practitioners of "new age" spirituality, actually date back through antiquity to the scholars of ancient Persia, Egypt, and Greece. (including Aristotle.)

Gemstones are, simply put, minerals that when cut and polished are used to make jewelry, adornments, and decorative objects. Minerals are naturally occuring, inorganic substances that have a specific chemical formula and a specific crystal structure. There are a couple of exceptions; organic substances like amber and jet, along with certain rocks, like lapis lazuli, are included as gemstones since they are also used to make jewelry, etc. (a rock is an aggragate of minerals/non-minerals, so doesn't have a specific chemical formula.)

Gemstones are typically broken down into precious or semi-precious stones. Precious stones are diamonds, sapphires, rubies, & emeralds. This distinction is based on history- the rarity of the stones in ancient times. Currently, a Tsavorite garnet (a green garnet) can cost more than an emerald of comparable size, clarity and cut.

Rubies and sapphires fall into the mineral gemstone group of corundum. Emeralds are part of the beryl group. Diamonds are their own thing. Classification into a group is based on similar chemical composition.

The list below is by no means definitive; I used group designations I found in my reading. It is also in no way an exhaustive list; I tried to include stones I see often as faceted stones, cabochons, or beads.

For some of the less common stones, I linked to google image pages of jewelry made from those stones.

Some natural gemstone groups & their commonly-used gemstone species: