Monthly Archives: November 2021

Amber. Buranite

  • November 30, 2021
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Buranite – green amber of artificial origin

However, the reality is exactly the opposite. As soon as a green stone appears on the jewelry market, the fashion that has arisen for it instantly grows into a frenzy. A month or two, and now experts of different sizes are juggling with superlatives, and buyers who are languishing in queues demand more than two in one hand.

The psychology of color perception is amazing. It would seem: there is greener on Earth than any other. Especially when you consider that the sea water is green. Monotony is boring to a person, and therefore it is logical for a green decor to stay in a corral.

It would be okay if the stone is new, unknown and promising. But after all, old finds are quite capable of giving the consumer a honeymoon of fresh love! In fairness, it should be noted that such a spring in a relationship from time to time comes to stones of any color. In our case, it all started with amber …

The advertisement is engine of the trade

The jewelry market has long treated amber like a stepmother to Cinderella. Buyers were delighted with the democratic price of amber products. Collectors compiled impressive collections of petrified resins on modest budgets. Applied chemistry once every ten years created artificial analogs of natural stone, for the sake of fun painting their creations in completely unreal colors.

A sluggish amber happiness lasted for a hundred years, until one day young talented marketers conspired to promote the material so that they could make good money on it.

The advertising campaign, which began at the beginning of the new millennium, convinced the consumer: amber is valuable, and it is prestigious to pay a lot for it. Quickly saturated with amber of traditional honey color, the market drew attention to colored exotic – fossil fossils of resins of red, blue, green and other atypical shades.

This is where the holders of artificial amber technology got excited …

Sleight of hand, and no cheating!

Do not think that the tricks of Thiel Ulenspiegel, who sold manure under the guise of medicine to pompous burghers, are relevant today. Gross deception is not in honor these days! But no one tells the truth to the buyer either …

New-fashioned green stones, called buranite, are positioned by sellers in different ways. The most innocent are desperately cunning, calling the stone Arabian amber and telling tales about collecting green fragments at the bottom of the sea while mining for pearls. Others preach the theory of artificial aging of natural pine resin, suggesting the original natural origin of the sparkling green diva.

However, clever traders ignore the questions of the genesis of buranite, but reasonably reason about its outstanding (in comparison with real amber) physical and aesthetic properties.

What sellers are silent about

Experienced jewelry market participants remember how various imitations of amber appeared in different years. Bernite, as the most beautiful analogue of a precious stone, turned out to be so self-sufficient that soon the name “artificial amber” disappeared from its price tags.

Not only did the producers learn to tell the burnite the characteristics of the best amber varieties, they began to change the chemical composition of the polymer so that the solidifying artificial resin mass acquired an exotic color!

Needless to say, the most popular varieties of bernite are green stones?

What distinguishes blizzard from bernite?

The most notable difference is the two letters in the title. Such transformations in trade names are common: the pronunciation traditions of letter combinations vary from language to language.

Perhaps blizzard is a product of the updated technology for the production of bernite? It is not excluded. However, the improvement of the production process does not change the principle of making artificial green amber.

But the consumer properties of buranite – this is noted by all experts – surpass the parameters of the samples of bernite half a century ago. First of all, the saturation and depth of color of buranite remain at their original level, regardless of the operating conditions of the product. Simply put, the stone does not scratch, does not fade, does not crack and does not grow cloudy even on the hand of the concrete worker of the Sahara culvert.

Serious jewelers at one time neglected Bernite, but modern jewelry with buranite is exhibited at exhibitions. The skillfully crafted setting of buranite cabochons helps the stone to look dignified and rich. Modest bernite beads of the past years of production look less presentable …

Colour! The marketers managed to guess, and the technologists achieved that degree of color perfection when the stone pleases with its color any, even the pickiest appraiser. If the main focus of the production of bernites was the nominal multicolor, then blizzard is produced only in green, but as beautifully green as possible!

Apparently, Buranite is destined to become the standard of beauty of transparent green stone. Let’s wait a bit …

Kabeer Agate, One of the best Online Metaphysical Store.

Is adamite mineral poisonous? Only eaten …

  • November 10, 2021
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Fortunately, neither humans nor any other creatures feed on adamites. Therefore, there is no need to escape from arsenic poisoning after episodic communication with a beautiful and rare stone. Yes, and jewelry with adamites and adamites on the shelves of jewelry stores cannot be found, although in some cases the stone is cut and set in silver.

Adamite’s story

French mineralogist Gilbert-Joseph Adam, who worked in the 19th century, described adamite from samples brought from South America. The first specimens of the beautiful yellow stone were found in the Chilean Atacama Desert, on the territory of the Gagnarsillo ore deposit.

The find took place in 1866. Later, the Adamites were found in Mexico, Greece, and France. Today, the Adamites are appreciated from Turkey and especially from Africa, from the vicinity of the Namibian city of Tsumeb. In Russia, adamite is found in the Far East, in Transbaikalia, near Nizhny Tagil.

Adamite crystals on limonite

Long known to the American Indians, adamite was used in shamanic rituals. The person doomed to be sacrificed was decorated with adamite beads, and a larger bead was put in his mouth. The swallowed stone dissolved in the stomach of the unfortunate person, guaranteeing the inevitable transition to the spirit world.

Properties of adamite

Adamite (adamin in the Russian mineralogical tradition) is rare, fragile and unstable. The hardness of the gem does not exceed 3.5 points on the Mohs scale. Crystals of adamite usually do not even reach 10 mm in length, although in some deposits there are beautiful intergrowths up to 2.5 cm in size. Mexican adamites from the state of Durango are especially large and sometimes grow up to 12 centimeters in length.

Micro cluster of adamite crystals, France.  Macro shooting.

Adamite is extremely fragile and prone to cracking even without mechanical stress.

In nature, adamite is rare. Zinc arsenate crystals most readily grow on a limonite or calcite substrate, while adamite forms geodes and druses in natural cavities and cracks. The thin initial adamite crust is covered with crystalline grains, after which the growth of well-formed crystals of the mineral is sometimes observed.

Yellow and green crystals of adamite have a characteristic prismatic shape, but can be acicular or tabular. In ultraviolet light, adamite crystals, not too contaminated with impurities, fluoresce with a lemon-tone glow.

The stone dissolves easily in acidic solutions. The products of the dissociation of zinc arsenate, which is adamite, are extremely toxic – so the Indian priests were not mistaken, considering the swallowed adamite the right ticket to the land of their ancestors.

The chemical formula of the mineral is Zn2 (AsO4) (OH). The OH hydroxyl group attached to the zinc-arsenic oxide compound is easily removed by heating. Dehydration causes spontaneous cracking, discoloration and loss of clarity of the mineral.

Colored adamite

Natural color of adamite is bright, juicy shades of yellow, yellowish-brown and yellow-green colors. There are, however, and colorless, and pinkish, and purple, and brownish adamites of uneven color. The abundance of copper, partially or completely replacing zinc atoms in the molecule of the substance, makes adamite bright green with a slight blue tint, but weakens the characteristic glass luster.

Green adamite crystal

Copper-containing, but not devoid of zinc, adamite is called cuproadamite. If the zinc in adamite is completely replaced by copper, the mineral becomes emerald-green olivienite, and its crystals sometimes grow in needle-like brushes, reminiscent of sea urchins.

Cobaltoadamite (especially with a small admixture of manganese) is beautiful with smooth color transitions from pink to lilac, lilac and violet. The admixed iron makes additional adjustments to the color characteristics of adamite.

Using adamite

In the jewelry industry, adamite is not used due to its minimal hardness, pronounced fragility and a tendency to spontaneous destruction when dried and heated. However, individual craftsmen take the risk of converting the flashy mineral into jewelry. Lilac Namibian adamites are faceted, yellow Mexican stones are turned into cabochons.

The aggregate of accreted adamite crystals is greenish yellow.  Spheroid shape.

The product is created in such a way that to exclude direct contact of the adamite insert with the body. Such a measure is sufficient to eliminate the negative impact of arsenic compounds on human health. However, in most cases, faceted adamites (the known maximum weight is three carats) enter mineralogical collections.

Collectible specimens of adamite are famous for their exceptional expressiveness and are in constant demand among lovers of natural rarities.

Faceted Adamite – faceted.

Home-grown lithotherapists readily recommend the use of adamite to treat skin diseases. However, adamite applications and other contact procedures, with excessive zeal, can be harmful: arsenic is destructive to the cells of the body.

To completely eliminate the danger, jewelry adamites are recommended to be stored in separate boxes. Collectible adamites should be kept under glass.

Green amber

  • November 10, 2021
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If grateful humanity decides to erect a monument to a precious stone, then amber will take the first place in the queue for the pedestal. Because, at least, the acquaintance with electricity, without which there is nowhere, happened with the help of amber.

What color should the sculpture be carved in honor of the ancient companion of mankind? Honey, say adherents of the classic amber variety. Green, will be clarified by deep connoisseurs of beauty – and they will be right!

Green amber is rare and uniquely beautiful. But what kind of green amber are we talking about? Let’s try to figure it out.

Different greens of different amber

The lion’s share of amber mined in the Baltics, central and northern Europe is honey-yellow. In some cases, the mined stones turn distinctly green – retaining, however, a yellow or yellow-brown hue.

Mineralogists explain such color deviations by special conditions of “storage”. Some specimens of newly formed amber, on a whim of fate, fell into swampy water full of decaying organic matter. And they spent enough time in them for the interaction of tree resins with nitrogenous compounds.

As a result of slow natural nitrogenation, ordinary honey amber acquired the color of a dead grass. Such greens are far from emerald green, but greenish European amber is in demand: after all, they are beautiful, and even rare … Curious samples of fossil resins are mined on the island of Sicily. Most of them are red, some cast an obvious blue, sometimes with a noticeable green tint. Even more beautiful stones were once dug in the lignite deposits of Saxony: they were distinguished by their transparency and golden-green color. However, all European green amber “fade” before Dominican amber.

The most beautiful and expensive

Nature decreed that the tree resins, fossilized in the geological conditions of the island of Haiti, became similar to the marine environment. The massif of stone is similar in color and transparency to sea water. Frequent foreign inclusions imitate sandy mounds and bottom vegetation.

Some of the Dominican amber is more blue than green. But the most beautiful and most expensive are famous for their beautiful green color with a slight bluish tint. The cost of the best copies can be calculated in tens of dollars per gram.

Fortunately, local miners of green amber are not prone to handicraft damage to the stone, and they do not really like to grind gaudy figurines from precious materials. However, if you find yourself in the shopping streets of Santo Domingo, shopkeepers will try to foist you on stale illiquid assets. Feel free to bargain, dropping the price five to ten times, and then in any jewellery workshop in Europe, roughly hewn skulls and figurines of chimeric insects will be turned into decent cabochons by your order.

High price as an incentive for chemical creativity

Emperor Nero gave a young and strong slave for a small piece of green amber. Therefore, even in ancient antiquity, artisans got the hang of turning ordinary amber into the green. Most of the stones cracked from heating in unrefined olive oil, but the color of the amber shards changed to green.

A good effect is also observed with dry heating of amber under conditions of limited oxygen access. The heated stone is tightly wrapped in foil and placed in the oven. After processing, the amber becomes glassy and literally shines with a golden-green color.

To enhance the chromaticity, medieval craftsmen came up with the idea of ​​processing the lower side of jewellery inserts hidden from the user with a dye paste. Green substrates for warm amber were also practised.

In modern conditions, green amber is produced everywhere. The difference in the chemical composition of amber mined in different deposits determines the variety of stone processing technologies. A multistage exposure is used in heated gaseous and liquid media. The saturation of fossilized resins with metal ions is carried out. Intense irradiation with a hard electromagnetic spectrum makes it possible to achieve the effect of luminescence in the thickness of the stone.

Researchers, however, note that the most attractive green color of amber is obtained not by the introduction of impurities, but by high-temperature exposure. Atomic aggregations arising under the influence of high temperatures change the light transmittance of the resins. The longest wavelengths (red) are absorbed, and the light passing through the array acquires a green tint.

Fully artificial imitations of green amber

Modern imitations of green amber are devoid of any disadvantages inherent in processed natural stone. If heated Baltic amber cracks with its characteristic internal “confetti” and acquires a rusty-green hue, then bernite and blizzard shine with emerald beauty, are distinguished by their strength and durability.

Constant replenishment of the market for polyester resins, cured with special additives or ultraviolet radiation, opens up great opportunities for green amber counterfeiters. Handicraft jewellery imitating green amber is becoming more and more perfect every year …