Garnet Jewellery: More Than Just a Red Stone

Garnet: The Most Misunderstood Gemstone

Ask most people what colour garnet is and they will say red. They are not wrong — but they are also only seeing a fraction of the picture. Garnet is actually a group of related minerals that occurs in almost every colour of the rainbow, including the extraordinarily rare colour-change blue garnet. At Corelune Jewellery, we love introducing customers to the incredible world of garnets beyond the familiar deep red.

Red Garnets: The Classic

Almandine and pyrope garnets produce the classic deep red that most people associate with the gem. Rhodolite garnet — a beautiful purplish-red variety — is one of the most popular and widely available garnets in jewellery. Red garnets represent friendship, trust, and protection, and are the January birthstone.

Green Garnets

• Tsavorite: Found in Kenya and Tanzania, tsavorite is a vivid, intense green garnet that rivals emerald in colour intensity and far surpasses it in durability. Fine tsavorite is rare and highly sought-after.
• Demantoid: The most prized of all garnets. Found primarily in Russia, demantoid shows extraordinary dispersion (fire) — more than diamond — and a distinctive internal characteristic called a "horsetail" inclusion that is used to identify Russian stones. Collector pieces of fine demantoid are extremely valuable.

Orange and Yellow Garnets

Spessartine garnet ranges from vibrant orange to orange-red. The finest, most saturated orange spessartines — known as "Fanta" garnets after their vivid orange colour — come from Namibia and Nigeria and are spectacular gems.

Colour-Change Garnet

Certain garnets from East Africa and Madagascar display a dramatic colour change from blue-green in daylight to purplish-red under incandescent light. This extraordinary variety is the rarest and most coveted of all garnets — and one of the few blue gemstones outside of the traditional blue gem species.

Explore our garnet jewellery collection at Corelune Jewellery — and discover just how extraordinary this gem truly is.