Ceylon Garnet

Ceylon Garnet is a historic trade name for garnet from Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), one of the world's oldest and richest gem-producing islands. The term most often refers to deep red almandine, though it is also applied to the cinnamon-brown hessonite grossular for which Sri Lanka is famous.

Sri Lankan gem gravels have supplied garnet, sapphire, spinel, and many other stones for over two thousand years. Ceylon Garnet's appeal lies in its rich color, good clarity, and the romance of its classic island origin.

The name persists in the trade as a marker of fine garnet from these legendary deposits.

Sri Lanka's gems come largely from high-grade metamorphic rocks of the Highland Complex, where almandine forms during regional metamorphism of aluminum-rich rocks, and grossular (hessonite) forms in calcium-rich metamorphic and skarn settings.

Over geological time these rocks weathered, and the durable garnets were washed into alluvial gravel deposits known locally as illam. Miners recover the water-worn gem garnets from these gravels, often alongside sapphire and other stones, much as they have for centuries.

Ceylon Garnet is transparent, deep red (almandine) to cinnamon-brown (hessonite), with vitreous luster.

• Hardness: 7-7.5.
• Streak: white.
• Optic character: singly refractive.
• Fracture: conchoidal, no cleavage.

Hessonite typically shows a characteristic swirly, treacle-like internal texture under magnification. Almandine is denser and deep red. Single refraction distinguishes both from ruby and red tourmaline.

Ceylon Garnet is faceted into rings, pendants, and earrings, and has long been a staple of classic and antique jewelry. Hessonite, in particular, is highly valued in South Asian astrology jewelry (where it is called gomed).

It is durable for daily wear. Garnet carries metaphysical associations of vitality and protection, and hessonite is used astrologically, though such uses are not scientific.