By Gary Hocking

Tiffany & Co had a brilliant gemologist working for them called George Frederick Kunz and it was in his honour that the gemstone Kunzite was named.  He was the discoverer of this lovely gemstone.

Kunzite, sometimes called Evening Stone, is a pink stone which is, along with Hiddenite, a variety of the spodumene mineral.  These two stones are often confused with other gems such as Morganite, Rose Quartz and Tourmaline. The colour in Kunzite comes from its manganese content. It is found in the USA, Russia, Burma, Brazil and today most comes from Brazil, Madagascar and Afghanistan.

Kunzite is a beautiful stone and has that wonderful quality called pleochroism.  This means that the intensity of the colour varies as you turn the stone in different directions, kind of now you see it, now you don’t, and that is exciting.  It is a nightmare for gemstone cutters as they must present the stone in its best light.

The best that kunzite gets is when it is a large or even a very large stone.  That’s when the colour is at its best and to be a significant show as a gemstone in jewellery it really needs to be six to ten carats and that is getting on the large side.

Apart from needing to be large if it is going to be highly attractive, it has one other slight drawback which many people find difficult to believe and that is that it will fade if exposed to a lot of direct sunlight.

Kunzite comes in at about 6.5-7 on the Mohs’ scale of hardness and this is not too bad for jewellery making.

For jewellery, I recommend that Kunzite be worn as a pendant so that you can wear a reasonable sized stone and capture its beauty.  Also, it is protected more as a pendant rather than a ring, and perhaps importantly those spiritual people will appreciate that it is a stone to be worn close to the heart, but I am not going into that as I know nothing about those aspects.  It looks wonderful with either white or yellow gold.