Garnet

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Mineral guide

Learn about Garnet

iconic crystal forms and vivid colors across species, top localities worldwide, quality factors, and care for display.

Regional guide

Garnet from Jeffrey Mine, Quebec, Canada

Jeffrey Mine grossular is one of the great Canadian garnets: transparent to translucent crystals in cinnamon, sherry-orange, honey, pink, colorless, and green, commonly bright enough to look gem-cut before they ever left the matrix. The classic look is hessonite—orange grossular, Ca3Al2(SiO4)3—perched as lustrous, complex dodecahedral crystals on dark syenitic or pale albitite/rodingite matrix, often with contrasting green diopside. The best examples have a limpid, “barley sugar” glow, sharp geometric faces, and the fine growth striations that make Jeffrey crystals instantly recognizable to experienced collectors.