Spinel Gemstone | Identification | Crystal Healing | Value

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The gemstone spinel remains most famous as a luxury red gem that significantly resembles the ruby. In fact, it’s hard to determine whether a red stone is a ruby or a spinel unless you’re an expert. The spinel and ruby were interchangeable until the late 19th century. Once the technology for studying gemstones became more advanced, many famous rubies were determined to be red spinels. One example of this phenomenon remains the huge “ruby” in the center of England’s royal crown. This substantial red stone was evaluated and was discovered to be a red spinel rather than a ruby.

Spinel remains a member of the spinel group of minerals. The name comes from the Latin word for the spine, which refers to the stone’s pointed crystals.

The chemical form of the spinel is MgAl2O4. Spinel’s come in a wide variety of colors such as:

White.
Colorless.
Blue.
Red.
Green.
Yellow.
Orange.
Red.
Purple. Purple spinels remain quite rare.
Black.

The Characteristics of a Spinel

Spinels remain quite useful in jewelry due to the hardness of the stone. A spinel’s hardness rating remains from 7.5 to 8 on the Moth’s hardness scale. This elegant stone has an isometric crystal system and a refractive index of 1.712-1.736. Pure spinels remain colorless. Impurities in the rock create the different colors of the spinel.

The stone has a cubic crystal system and is hex octahedral. Spinel contains a crystal habit that resembles flat triangular plates cause due to twinning.

Cut Spinel

Cut spinels have an isometric system and come in an octahedral form that remains twinned in most cases. The stone’s specific gravity ranges from 3.5 to 4.1. It looks transparent to opaque and has a vitreous or dull luster. Some of the most famous spinels in the world are the:

· Black Prince’s Ruby. This 170-carat bright red spinel was thought to be ruby for many years, and named “the Black Prince’s Ruby.” This exquisite spinel was first owned in the 1300s by Abu Sa’id, who was the Prince of Granada. After having several owners, the Black Prince’s Ruby wound up as a focal point of the United Kingdom’s Imperial State Crown. This gorgeous spinel remains set directly about the crown’s well-known Cullinan II diamond.
· Timur Ruby. This lovely spinel is a 352.5-carat spinel that remains set in Queen Victoria’s necklace in the Royal Collection. It was placed in the necklace in 1853. This stunning stone was found in Afghanistan inscribed with its original owner’s names in 1612. The Timur ruby was an item in a group of spinel’s presented to Queen Victoria from the East India Company in the year 1849.

· The Samarian Spinel. The largest known spinel in the world is the Samarian spinel. This significant red gemstone became a part of the Iranian Crown Jewels. It weighs about 500 carats. The stone has an inscription about Jahangir, who was the owner of the stone when he was the Mogul Emperor of India. During the Afsharid Conquest in the early 1700s, the Samarian Spinel was removed from India.
Samarian Spinel

Transparent red spinels were known as Bala rubies before the time of modern science. By the 1700s, only corundum was called ruby, and spinel gems got their own identity.

Finding Spinels

Spinels remain typically found in crystals in metamorphosed dolomite and limestone. Irregularly shaped igneous rocks also might contain spinel. Finally, spinel might occur in alluvial deposits as water-worn pebbles.

Where can Spinel be Found?

Red spinel occurs in marble. The stone gets weathered out of the marble and gets transported by streams. So many red spinels occur in alluvial deposits in the countries of:

Sri Lanka.
Thailand.
Cambodia.
Vietnam.
Myanmar.

Other countries that produce spinel of various colors include:

Afghanistan.
Nepal.
Tajikistan.
Australia.
Madagascar.
Tanzania.
Nigeria.

In the year 2000, vivid or glowing spinels were found in Myanmar, Tanzania, and Vietnam. Some bright blue spinels have also been found in Baffin Island in Canada.

Uses of Spinel

Spinel remains primarily used as a gemstone. Even though gem-quality spinels remain much rarer than sapphires, sapphires are much more valuable than spinels on the market. Spinel isn’t as popular with gem customers as sapphires, which affects its value on the market.

In recent years, spinel has been named the birthstone of August, joining the cheery, bright green peridot. This addition gives August babies a chance to have a wider variety of colors to choose from in birthstone jewelry.

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