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Aventurine Gemstones
What is Aventurine?
Aventurine is a variety of translucent quartz with abundant small plate- or flake-shaped inclusions of mica, ilmenite or hematite. These inclusions reflect light that enters the quartz and produce a sparkly appearance known as “aventurescence”. Aventurine is known to occur in range of greens, orange, brown and blue. Bright reflections blended with interesting color make aventurine a popular semiprecious gemstone.
Aventurine Gemstones:
Aventurine is most often cut en cabochon or used to make tumbled stones. It is popular in earrings, pendants, rings, beads, bracelets and pins. It has also been used to make carvings and beautiful vases and bowls. Green aventurine is sometimes confused with amazonite or jade. It is a popular stone because of its beauty and also because it is not highly priced.
Tumbled Aventurine:
Aventurine is a very good tumbling rough for those who are new to tumbling or those with experience. It polishes easily and is usually an inexpensive material. Aventurine has a hardness very close to that of quartz, agate and jasper. It can safely be tumbled with them.
| Rough aventurine. Image © iStockphoto / Melissa Carroll. |
More About Aventurine:
The phenomenon or aventurescence is not confined to quartz. The feldspar, oligoclase, sometimes contains plate- or flake-shaped inclusions of hematite or copper that produce the aventurescence effect. This popular adventurescent feldspar is known as “Sunstone”. There are also some imitation varieties of aventurine. These are produced by blending small flakes of copper or other metal into molten glass. One commercial stone produced this way is known as “goldstone,” another is known as “aventurine glass”. These commercial stones can usually be identified because the coarse metal flakes are clearly visible in the transparent glass.
| Blue aventurine quartz rough mined in Montana, USA. Image © Geology.com. |
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| Typical green aventurine with large obvious inclusions. Image © iStockphoto / Arpad Benedek. |
| Orange aventurine. Image © iStockphoto / Arpad Benedek.. |
| A light green aventurine with small inclusions. Image © iStockphoto / Arpad Benedek. |
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