New discovery: the rare purple garnets of Mozambique

New discovery: the rare purple garnets of Mozambique

The most fascinating gem discovered in recent years (presumably in 2016) was a rare purple garnet with a color change from East Africa, mainly Mozambique.
Unfortunately, this depot is located in a politically unstable area of ​​the country under the control of the armed resistance. This extraction area was recently closed by the government so this material, already rare in nature, is becoming truly unobtainable.
We therefore consider ourselves lucky to be able to offer you a couple of examples of this particular and very interesting garnet.
The peculiarity of these garnets is the wonderful deep purple color with red flashes and the excellent brilliance due to the high refractive index of light. These gems also exhibit an unusual color change, under cold light their purple is saturated and vibrant while under incandescent light, which has multiple wavelengths in the red part of the spectrum, they show a bright red color with magenta flashes. In balanced lighting conditions they present a deep purple with red flashes.

Some garnets extracted from the Mozambique mine were tested by the GIA laboratory which published its results in the autumn 2016 edition of Gems & Gemology.
“Spectrometry showed that the material was a pyrope-almandine garnet with the following chemical components: 48.8-59.5% pyrope, 37.9-47.6% almandine, 2.0-3.5% coarse and 0.5-0.6% spessartine. Although the chemical composition classifies these gems as rhodolite garnet, the analysis of the absorption spectra showed some unique properties. Since the main absorption bands dominate the green-yellow regions of the visible spectrum, two strong blue and red transmission regions combine to produce a purple color visible to the eye and also represent the strong color change ”
The material with the best color is found in sizes under 4 carats, the specimens we propose have precisely these characteristics so hurry up… we have strong doubts that we will find others similar.
Purple garnet changing color 4.15 ct
Purple garnet changing color 3.24 ct

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