Monday Musings... Everybody Must Get Stones

February 08, 2016

Yeah, yeah, bad Bob Dylan reference, but it was hard to resist! I thought it might be fun to share some of my favorite gemstones with you for today's Monday Musings. After spending time with customers at Spotlight on Art last week, I realize that people enjoy learning about stones. I've always been a bit obsessed with gems and minerals. One of my favorite parts of a museum is the gemstone section. Of course, my kids don't share this fascination yet so trying to read the exhibits is tough. During our last visit to the National Museum of Natural History, I took a bunch of photos of the gem classifications as my kids raced through and am still hoping to go back through them later. It's so cool to see the rainbow of colors in nature!

[Someday I will have time to blow these images up and actually READ what they say. In the meantime, pretty colors.]

My favorite stone finish these days is the druzy. A lot of people don't understand what a druzy (or druze or drusie) actually is, though. I explain a druzy as the raw crystalline surface of a stone. Think of a geode that is cracked open or the rough texture of a huge chunk of amethyst or citrine. The druzy finish can be found with a lot of stones in nature: agate, quartz, even emeralds. One of my favorite hashtags for my jewelry on Instagram (@englishnorman) is #druzylove. Here are some recent pieces I've tagged:

[The stone in the lower left image gives you an idea of how the druzies look in their uncut form.]

Another stone I love is labradorite. If you want to read about labradorite's specific gravity, refractive index, or how it occurs in mafic igneous rocks, visit here. While I like mineral associates in igneous rock as much as the next person (ha), the reason I like labradorite is the shimmer you see when light hits the stone. You can see flashes of green, blue, and pink among the beautiful greys and neutral tones. It's a really tough effect to capture in a photo. But it's a stone that goes with absolutely everything!