A deep warm red is the color most frequently found in Garnets. However, not many people are aware that the world of the garnet is far more colorful than that. Spectacular finds, especially in Africa, have enhanced the traditional image of the garnet with a surprising number of hues - even if red does continue to be its principal appearance.
Thanks to their rich color spectrum, garnets today may happily keep pace with changes of style and the trends of jewelry too. And thanks to these new finds, there is a reliable supply of them out there. In fact this gemstone group in particular is one which gives new impetus to the world of Fashion Jewelry today.

By the term 'garnet', the expert understands a group of more than ten different gemstones of similar chemical composition. The garnet also exists in various shades of green, a tender to intense yellow, a fire-burnt orange and some fine earth-colored nuances to boot. The one color which it cannot offer is blue.

Garent is a rough gemstone, making it much sought after. It has a hardness of 7 to 7.5 on the Mohs scale. The only thing which they don't like is being knocked about or subjected to improper heat treatment. Another bonus is their high refractive index, the cause of the garnet's great brilliance and the great beauty of Garnet Jewelry.

The etymology of the word 'Garnet' is something like 'the grainy one', coming from the Latin 'granum', for grain. This references not just the typical roundish shape of the crystals, but also the color of the red garnet, which often puts one in mind of the seeds of a nice ripe pomegranate. In the Middle Ages, the red garnet was also called the 'carbuncle stone'. And even today names like Arizona ruby, Arizona spinel, Montana ruby or New Mexico ruby are still known to be rife within the trade.

Garnets have been known to Man for many thousands of years. It is said that the Biblical Noah used a garnet lantern to help him steer his ark through the dark night, during the era of the flood. Garnets are also found in jewelry from ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman times.

The specialist world was amazed a few years ago by the amazing find of a type of garnet which had been very scarce until then. At the Kunene River, on the border between Namibia and Angola, a deposit of radiant orange to red 'spessartites' was discovered. The spessartite was originally named after the site of a find which was made in Germany.