Today is the first year anniversary on Etsy. It has been a great beginning and I want to thank all of my wonderful customers for contributing to the shop's success. I look forward to serving you in the future.
The grossular garnet pictured is a vintage specimen. It was collected 20 to 30 years ago. I nabbed it from a friend who was selling some old inventory. Mexico has just become far too dangerous to seek minerals. Most of my Mexican mineral sources has quit traveling to the mining districts.
Generically "garnet" is used as if it were the proper name of a mineral. However mineralogically "garnet" is the term for a group of minerals related by chemical formula and crystallographic structure. The most commonly known of the garnet group are almandine, andradite, pyrope, uvarovite, spessartine and grossular.
Almandine is the brownish red color and is known for occurring as giant crystals. Andradite occurs in a wide variety of colors but popularly the black andradites are known as melanites, green as demantoid and topazolite is an andradite. Popular grossulars are hessonite and tsavorite.
So as I tell the school children Garnet is the mineral's last name, it's first name is Grossular and it nickname is Hessonite. So Grossular Garnet, aka Hessonite.
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