Not one mineral but a family, mostly deep red. Old, warm and hard-wearing.
The aesthetic
Garnet is a family rather than a single mineral, sharing one crystal structure across a range of chemistries and so across a range of colours: the familiar deep blood red of almandine and pyrope, but also orange spessartine, green tsavorite and demantoid, and the colour-changing material that reads red under lamplight and green by day. Crystals grow as chunky twelve or twenty-four sided forms, often loose in schist.
The dynamic
Garnet is associated with vitality, devotion and endurance, and has a long history as a travelling stone, carried for safe return rather than for the journey itself.
Some variations
- almandine
- pyrope
- spessartine
- grossular
- tsavorite
- demantoid
- rhodolite