Category: Fascinating Gems

Not long ago it was pointed out to me that my imperial jasper beads were actually synthetic stones and that the real imperial jasper looked nothing like them. What I have and love to work with is richly textured variations of these round beads:

I only know what they are called from stores’ or rock show sellers’ labels and spoken words. Indeed, those are sometimes inaccurate, but somehow it never occurred to me to look up more information about the popular stone that was invariably called “imperial jasper.”

So on I went on a quest to find out the difference between a true imperial jasper and whatever my beautiful beads were. To my surprise, finding out anything about my kind of imperial jasper was not easy at all.

First, I had to wander through a lot of rather unhelpful metaphysical information. For some reason Google put that at the top of every search query I could think of. My requests were becoming longer and more insistent on mineralogy and geology, and finally Google gave up and told me that the natural imperial jasper looked like this:

Along with the visual shock and amazement came the news that the real stone’s prices were much higher then even the most expensive and stunning varieties of what I thought the imperial jasper was.

That still left open the question about the nature of my own beads. I could not find any coherent, authoritative answer online, and that led me to believe that maybe manufacturing of this stone was some kind of a guarded secret. All I could find was guesses and conflicting statements:

• this is a sea sediment jasper made with small pieces of inexpensive textured stone held together by a binder
• pieces or both stones and binding materials are dyed for extra appeal
• it is also can be called impression jasper, sea sediment jasper, and emperor jasper
• this stone comes from China, Madagascar, and South Africa

I am not sure that “impression jasper” belongs in the list of names though. It seems to be a real stone, and its patterns of beige/tan web of veins are a bit different from those of imperial jasper.

What still remains unclear is whether my stone beads are synthetic. Some sources say that they are and also call this kind of jasper synthetic regalite. But then the same sources say things like “howlite is synthetic turquoise” and ruin their credibility. What is regalite, synthetic or natural, also remains a mystery.

I will revisit all this at a later time. I love digging for stone info. But right now and for a good number of weeks ahead of me there is custom jewelry to design and people’s treasured pieces to repair.

My catch from The Gathering of the Guilds show in Portland today. The stone is called phronite. It can be found only in two places in the world; one is in Australia, another is in China. These are chunky beads that will make good focals in whatever necklaces I am going to make. Right now the number of ideas is way more than the available beads.

So I wanted to learn more about the stone as I often do when it is new to me. Surprisingly, Google only went as far as agreeing that “phronite” is a word and describes a stone. That was it. No images, no information, nothing at all besides mentioning it in the same breath with malachite.

Anybody knows anything about phronite?

Updated 5/2/18: Turns out the correct name of the stone is PREHNITE. I could not believe there was a stone that Google knew nothing about and tried some derivations of “phronite” with it. None of them were actual stones or even words, but one triggered something in Google, and I got photos of stones very similar to mine and lots of suggestions on where to buy either beads or crystals. Phew! Much better than my interpretation of seller’s handwritten note with a genuine typo in it 🙂

Oregon Sunstone with Schiller
Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Hunt and One World Gemstone

Blue Smectite on Faden Quartz Crystals
Photograph by Norman King