garnet inclusions under a 300x microscope
Red, beautiful and rare
As children we explored the highland streams and felt like treasure hunters, scanning alluvial banks for glittering mica fragments and seemingly profitable pyrites possibilities.
As adults perhaps we don’t get that same fascinating feeling anymore from common shists and glittery slates but we do always feel the same sense of good fortune upon discovering garnets.
Garnets are rich red mineral crystals, visually the clonal siblings of rubies and they are frequent inclusions in our carved work here at Gneiss things due to their occasional occurrence in the surface rocks of the Western Isles.
click image for pendants with garnet inclusions
Garnets have long been regarded as semi-precious stones and larger crystals are often cut into faceted specimens for encasement in precious metals.
Many of the garnets we expose in our carvings are thousands of millions of years old and they may be fractured and crushed by having circumnavigated the globe - often at great temperatures and pressures as a result of the earths incredible history of plate tectonics.
