Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2006 1:20 am Posts: 2756 Location: Southern California, U.S.A.
valeria102 wrote:
This one looks right and the location sounds right, so I guess it really is a duck.
I know Iran produces demantoid and I know of Astro Gallery's fine reputation. But Mindat doesn't show Iran as a source locality for uvarovite. I don't doubt AG but it's interesting the Soghan locality doesn't show up on Mindat unless it's a very recent discovery.
Rick, I realized the same re mindat.org. Strange...
If the buyer of that Ebay uvarovite would be a bit social he / she should add a pic of it to mindat's gallery, and tell mindat about the Iranian source.
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2005 12:47 pm Posts: 2505 Location: Eastern Europe
ROM wrote:
But Mindat doesn't show Iran as a source locality for uvarovite.
Hm... perhaps they need an update. This is not the first time I've seen the source mentioned by a reputable source. Minedirect is another I can remember right now - they had such material too a while back.
Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2006 1:20 am Posts: 2756 Location: Southern California, U.S.A.
valeria102 wrote:
Hm... perhaps they need an update. This is not the first time I've seen the source mentioned by a reputable source.
They definitely do. I did a little further checking and found out that Iran has a mind-boggling 100 million tons of chromite reserves. Soghan is but one Iranian chromite source, so it's likely that other fine uvarovite specimens will be emerging over time.
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2005 12:47 pm Posts: 2505 Location: Eastern Europe
A first bit of feedback came in. From Ralph Jolyon of Mindat:
"[...]posted on mindat by Ed Rosenzweig.
<<Analysis by the AGTA's gem testing center concluded that the deep green garnets from Soghan were andradite, and that the chromatophores were Fe3+ and Cr3+, thus putting them in the "demantoid" category. I talked directly with the AGTA lab a few years ago. The analysis was also presented at the 2006 World Gemological Research Conference. An abstract of the presentation can be found in Gems & Gemology, Fall 2006, page 131. >>
Thanks, Valeria, for caring for the uvarovite matter.
Btw: To my humble opinion one should write uwarowite, not uvarovite because the name of that Russian was / is written Uwarow. Or is this just the German transscription of Uvarov? I don't really know.
on Alan Guisewite's Mineral Collection webpage @ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~adg/adg-pgpimages.html Mr. Guisewite has a chart listing color change garnets with the variety and location mentioned. in his chart of ccg's, he mentions a spessartine/grossular/almandine and spessartine/grossular/pyrope. he has an awesome garnet mineral collection and other specimens as well.
Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2006 1:20 am Posts: 2756 Location: Southern California, U.S.A.
Hi GK,
Thanks for the Guisewite link; it's an interesting resource. He lists Arem's "Encyclopedia" as a source on CCGs along with "others." I'd love to know what the "others" are since the Arem book was published long before some of the CC garnets were discovered.
I'd also like to learn who did the studies that determined the garnet species involved as well as what techniques were used. As you know, assigning end-member names to garnets can be difficult as well as somewhat controversial. Most garnets contain multiple species and that leads to questions about how much of any one type must be present before giving the stone that species' name.
I don't doubt that CC garnet types other than pyrope-spessartine exist but those are the only ones I know for certain to have been scientifically documented (Stockton & Manson). Other sources of information are always welcomed!
You bring up an interesting point with question of the proper spelling of uvarovite.
The Germans pronounce V's as W's and W's as V's. For example the most mispronounced word in the West is VolksWagon proper Pronunciation is WolksVagon. Its possible that in order to get the proper Pronunciation of uwarowite the Germans replaced the W's with V's. Since it was a foreign word this would be the only way to insure proper pronunciation.
Just my thoughts on it.
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