I do have one problem with the article, though. They refer to red beryl as 'red emerald', which is a misnomer and a BIG Bozo no-no to gemologists, so don't start calling it that because if I ever catch any of you calling it red emerald, I'll ... I'll ... I'll just have to put you over my knee and spank you.
The Most Unusual Gems You’ve Never Heard Of
Red beryl, known as “red emerald” among some dealers, has only one source: a mine, now closed, in the Wah Wah Mountains of Utah.CreditCreditBjorn Wylezich/Alamy
By Victoria Gomelsky
May 11, 2019
"TUCSON — In February, during one of the annual gem shows here, Ray Zajicek displayed a stone that was not for sale: a 32-carat hexagonal crystal of red beryl — or “red emerald,” as the emerald dealer prefers to call it.
“It’s probably 10 times rarer than green emerald,” Mr. Zajicek said.
For an industry that creates sales allure from notions of value, wealth and scarcity, rare can be a loaded word.
But in this case, it’s an accurate one.
Unlike the classic green emeralds found in Colombia, Brazil, Zambia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and elsewhere, red beryl is the result of such a rare geological occurrence that it has been found in only one location: a mine, closed since 2001, in the remote Wah Wah Mountains of Utah.
How does that happen?
“These seemingly unique situations are related to very specific geologic conditions,” said Christopher P. Smith, president and chief gemologist at American Gemological Laboratories in New York.
As for red beryl, he said, the presence of a specific manganese compound produces its distinctive cherry-red color.
And the one thing possibly more surprising than nature’s creation of these one-source gems?
The fact that they are discovered at all.
It almost always happens by accident. “Someone kicks over a rock and finds a pretty stone,” said Shane McClure, global director of colored stone services at the Gemological Institute of America.
Csarite is found only in the Anatolian mountains of Turkey. CreditMilenyum Metal Madencilik AS
That’s more or less what happened near Milas, a town in the Anatolian mountains of Turkey, about an eight-hour drive south of Istanbul. In the 1970s, bauxite miners discovered large, gem-quality specimens of a color-changing mineral called diaspore embedded in some of the ore.
“Bauxite used to sell for $20 a ton and they thought the crystals were lowering the quality of the bauxite so they put them aside,” said Murat Akgun, who was a jeweler in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar in 1998 when he fell in love with the gem and embarked on a mission to sell it internationally.
“I was fascinated by the colors and variety and how they formed,” he said.
Diaspore, which blushes from a kiwi green under fluorescent lighting to a raspberry pink in candlelight, now is marketed under the brand names ... "
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/fash ... anite.html
