Garnet Crystal Bracelet

This is almandine, the deep-red iron garnet - Fe₃Al₂(SiO₄)₃ - the most common of the garnet family. Iron gives the colour: a dark red that can carry violet or brown depths, glassy and transparent to translucent where the stone is clean.

Garnet is harder than quartz at Mohs 7–7.5, and it forms in well-shaped crystals - the rounded twelve- and twenty-four-sided forms that grow in metamorphic rock. The colour is not surface or treatment; it runs through the whole stone.

The name comes from the Latin for pomegranate, granatum - for the deep-red crystals that cluster in their host rock like seeds in the fruit.

Asked often

Is the red natural?
Yes. The red is iron within the garnet’s own structure - no dye, no treatment. It runs through the whole stone, not just the surface.

Is garnet hard enough for daily wear?
Yes - at Mohs 7–7.5 it is harder than quartz and wears very well. It was set into rings worn daily for thousands of years.

Are there other colours of garnet?
The garnet family runs from green to orange to near-black, but the classic deep red is almandine, the iron garnet - the stone worn here.

How do I care for it?
Wipe with a soft, slightly damp cloth and dry. Hard and stable; keep the cord dry and store apart from softer stones it could scratch.

1. Worn on either wrist, over the hand, on a durable elastic cord.
2. Hold it to the light - the red deepens and clears.
3. Wipe with a soft, slightly damp cloth and dry.
4. Harder than quartz at Mohs 7–7.5 - keep the cord dry; store apart from softer beads it could scratch.

Many traditions rinse or air their stones from time to time; that is a matter of preference, and the rest is yours.

The elastic cord lasts longest kept dry - remove before swimming, bathing, or applying scent. Do not soak.

• Stone: Almandine garnet
• Composition: Fe₃Al₂(SiO₄)₃
• Crystal system: Cubic
• Hardness: Mohs 7–7.5
• Colour: Deep red · sometimes violet or brown depths
• Treatment: None · untreated
• Band: Durable elastic cord
• Origin: India
• Care: Wipe with a soft cloth · keep the cord dry

Garnet is one of the oldest worn gemstones on record. It was set into the gold jewellery of Egypt thousands of years ago, and the lapidaries of the ancient world inlaid thin red garnet over gold foil - the technique that gives Anglo-Saxon and Roman jewellery its glowing red cells. Bohemian garnet later filled the parures of nineteenth-century Europe.

For its colour the stone was carried by travellers as a token of safe return across several cultures - named here as what people believed; the Roman and medieval sources record the custom. The red is the stone’s own; what is read into it is the wearer’s.