CAIRNGORMS
This part of the Highlands can be rather inaccessible (more of a no-go area in winter - a time when it shows much of its beauty). It contains several important peaks, including Scotland's second highest, Ben Macdhui (2nd to Ben Nevis).
CAIRNGORM
Cairngorm is a yellow-brown type of smoky quartz that is often used in traditional Celtic jewelry. Cairngorm is not Scottish topaz.
Cairngorm: Old Scottish word for smoky quartz, a transparent brown to yellowish brown gemstone. Inexpensive.
Calibre Cut: A style of precise cutting for small gemstones in a given shape so they may be set in a snugly fitting pattern.
Cairngorm: Used in traditional Celtic jewelry it is a yellowish brown smoky quartz. Almost extinct.
Calar: To pierce or cut a piece of metal creating a design.
They used materials such as agate, cairngorm and amethyst, set in silver. Interest in Scottish jewelry increased through the writings of Sir Walter Scott and Queen Victoria's purchase of a Scottish castle.
This group includes rock crystal, amethyst, citrine, cairngorm and smoky quartz.
Quartzite
Quartzite is composed of an interlocking mass of quartz crystals with irregular boundaries, produced by metamorphic processes.
aka Cairngorm, Colorado Diamond, Morion, Radium Diamond, Smoky Citrine, Smoky Topaz
Nearly all of this brownish-black, "smoky" variety of quartz on the market (ours included) is a rock crystal that has been heat-treated to produce this coveted color.
In fact most citrine, cairngorm and yellow quartz are formed as the result of artificially controlled heat and light application to amethyst.
Many were set with Cairngorm's, a variety of golden smoky quartz found only in the Cairngorm Mountains. Cairngorms are no longer mined and today either citrine or smoky quartz is used as a substitute.
Smoky quartz was also known as Cairngorm, after the locality, Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland) in which it was, and still is mined and used for jewelry.
This variety was sometimes known as smoky topaz in the past, which is incorrect and misleading.
Smoky Quartz: smoky quartz gets its color from irradiated impurities which have a smoky area around them. The term "cairngorm" is used to describe the variety found in the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland.
Smoky Quartz is tan or brown quartz. Very dark reddish brown smoky quartz is known as cairngorm (from the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland), and black or blackish brown material is known as morion.
Occurrence
Brazil, Madagascar, Switzerland, U.S. (Colorado), Australia and Spain. Smoky quartz from the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland is called cairngorm.
Smokey Quartz has recently increased in popularity in the gemstone trade. The very dark, almost opaque form is sometimes called Morion. Brown or Smokey Quartz from the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland is appropriately named Cairngorm.
Highly attractive but less well-known Scottish stones included the cairngorm, a kind of quartz with a smoky brown, grey or yellowish colour.
A variety of smoky quartz is cairngorm, which owes its name to the legendary source in the Scottish Highlands. Smoky quartz is the national gem of Scotland, whose national scepter includes a large smoky quartz.
The coloring is amazingly variable, and quartz may be gray (smokey-quartz), purple (amethyst), pink (rose-quartz), yellow (citrine), green (Prase), brown (Cairngorm), and black, as well as being white or colorless (rock crystal).
the Bugaboos, the Mont Blanc massif (and peaks such as the Aiguille du Dru, the Aiguille du Midi and the Grandes Jorasses), the Bregaglia, Corsica, parts of the Karakoram, the Towers of Paine, Baffin Island, the Cornish coast and the Cairngorms.
Common topaz is widespread, and fine gem material comes from Saxony, the Ural Mountains, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, and the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland.
Topazolite... see andradite
Tourmaline ... {tur'-muh-leen} ...
 See also: Quartz, Mineral, Crystal, Stone, Crystals
|
