Fine Iolite is RareWe recently found some very fine pieces of iolite, not something that happens very often. That's because it's rare to find iolite in sizes weighing over 1 carat and with good clarity. High quality iolite is a strikingly beautiful stone when cut well so we wanted to know more about this unusual gem. ![]() Many of the lesser-known colored gems are unheard of because they are relatively soft. This is true of gem varieties like fluorite, apatite, sphene and diopside. But iolite is actually quite a hard stone, with a rating of 7 to 7.5 on the Mohs scale, making it as hard as tourmaline and harder than tanzanite, peridot and all the quartz varieties. Iolite is not well known, simply because it is so difficult to find. If iolite was commonly available in gemstones of larger sizes, it might be as popular (and as valuable) as tanzanite.
Iolite deposits are found in India, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Finland, Madagascar, Mozambique, Burma, Norway, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, the USA and Zimbabwe. Most of the fine material we have been seeing recently comes from mines in Madagascar. |
- 首次发布于: April-23-2008
- 最后更新于:: January-22-2019
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