Smoky Quartz and Peridot Bracelet

Peridot

Peridot is an ancient and yet currently very popular gemstone. It is so old that it can be found even in Egyptian jewellery from the early second millennium BC. The stones used in those days came from an occurrence on a little volcanic island in the Red Sea, about 70 km off the Egyptian coast, off Assuan, which was rediscovered only around 1900 and has been completely exploited since.
Peridot, however, is also a very modern stone, for only a few years ago Peridot occurrences were discovered in the Cashmere region, and the stones from there show a unique beauty of colour and transparency, so that the image of the stone, which was somewhat dulled over the ages, has received an efficient polishing.

Peridot is one of the few gemstones which exist only in one colour. Finest traces of iron account for the deep green colour with a slight golden hue. Chemically Peridot is just an iron-magnesium-silicate, and the intensity of colour depends on the amount of iron contained. The colour as such can come in any variation from yellow-green and olive to brownish green. Peridot is not especially hard it only achieves about 6.5 to 7 on the Moh's scale and yet it is easy to care for and quite robust.

The most beautiful stones come from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. Peridot as gemstone does also exist in Myanmar, China, the USA, Africa and Australia. Stones from East Burma, today's Myanmar, show a vivid green with fine silky inclusions. Peridot from the American state of Arizona, where it is quite popular in Native Indian jewellery, often shows a yellowish to golden brown shade.

Smoky Quartz

A very common, coarse-grained variety of the silica mineral that ranges in colour from nearly black through smoky brown. No distinct boundary exists between smoky and colourless. Its abundance causes it to be worth considerably less than either or. Heating bleaches the
stone, the colour sometimes passing through yellow; these yellow pieces are often sold as. Crystals of the mineral frequently contain inclusions of gas (carbon dioxide), liquid (often both water and liquid carbon dioxide), or solids (rutile). Smoky from Mount Cairngorm, Scotland, is known as cairngorm and is a favourite ornamental stone in Scotland, where it is worn in brooches with Highland costume. Its properties are those of other stones. Today, the vast majority of smoky is mined in Brazil, but it is found in most of the major gem producing nations.

Smoky is quite often sold in the trade as smoky. 99% of the time a gem offered as smoky is actually this variety of. Since is a separate mineral, this type of name can be confusing and should be clearly disclosed as to which gem is actually being presented, since also occurs in a brown color.