Wednesday, 18 March 2009

Guessing gems

Here's a bit of a guessing game. A few days ago I was fortunate enough to be given a kind of lucky-dip selection of gemstones, chunky ones with holes drilled through, to use as beads.




Quite a few I can identify but some have got me stumped. So if anyone has any ideas, then please feel free to share and discuss! I'd love to be able to definitely put names to the gems.


Picture one.
1. Top left: Fluorite
2. Bottom left: Carnelian
3. Top right: Blue Lace Agate
4. Bottom right: Sodalite



Picture two.
5. Top left: Amethyst
6. Bottom left: Green Moss Agate
7. Top right: Smokey Quartz
8. Bottom right: Carnelian




Picture three.
9. Top left: Moonstone
10. Bottom left: Moonstone
11. Top middle: Moonstone
12. Bottom middle: Amazonite?
13. Top right: Fluorite
14. Bottom right: Citrine



Actually, having listed everything I seem to have been able to identify much less than I'd initially thought I could! All help, even guesses, gratefully received!

Added note - I shall add suggestions of stone names to their numbers as they come in but please feel free to disagree with them, especially my ones!

Another added note - Everything has got a name now. I hope they're the right ones! If you disagree with any, please let me know.

Posted by Silver Moss Jewellery at 19:04
Labels: , , ,

5 comments:

  1. Linden19 March 2009 at 19:24

    Oh what a lovely puzzle - and they are *so* beautiful! Afraid these are only guesses but here goes...

    The bottom left one on picture two looks dark greenish on my monitor, so could it maybe be green moss agate?

    And - a wild guess here - could the top left one on picture three be moonstone??

    Hope you get lots more responses and hope they'll be considerably more certain than mine!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Silver Moss Jewellery19 March 2009 at 23:22

    Thank you for kicking it off!

    I hadn't thought of moonstone although agate had crossed my mind for a few of the non-identified ones.

    In real life, though, that green one has more of a greyish tinge to it. But that may not mean it's not green moss agate, just a greyish green version!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Metaxia15 April 2009 at 16:20

    This was fun...reminded me of the gemmology tests we had to do in class.

    I reackon in Pic 1.....
    1. Amethyst
    2. Canelian (i see you have another one in that colour, the darker one could even be jasper)
    3. Blue Lace Agate
    4. Sodalite (I very much doubt it's Lapis. Lapis is more valuable than having it cut in that form. And the colour of the bead seems too light with all the white dots to be Lapis.)

    Pic 2:
    7. Smokey Quartz

    Hope I've helped:)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dravens Halo24 April 2009 at 02:59

    my suggestions are:

    1. Fluroite or maybe amethyst (depending on how hard it is)
    2. Carnelian (a form of agate)
    3. Agate as well
    4. Sodalite (deinitiley not lapis lazuli - due to lack of pyrite)
    5. Amethyst
    6. definitely an agate - maybe green moss agate you will be able to tell more if you hold it up to the light
    7. Another form of Agate , may be smoky quartz - if you hold it up to the light and its translucent and a grey brown its smoky quartz.
    8. Carnelian
    9. 10. 11. all could be moonstone (if it has they all have a pink/blue reflection)
    12. could be fluorite, aventurine, or maybe amazonite.
    13. fluorite
    14. citrine

    hope this helps

    ReplyDelete
  5. Silver Moss Jewellery26 April 2009 at 20:24

    Thanks for your comments, Metaxia and Dravens Halo. They're incredibly helpful and I think all the stones are as definitively identified as possible.

    Do let me know if you think I've made any errors in the lists though!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks so much for leaving a comment here - I always love to read them and I do my best to reply to them all, either here or by email.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)