Tourmaline & Tourmaline Jewelry

Tourmaline is actually a pretty intesting crystal. It has a complicated chemical structure which allows it to contain various impurities. These give the tourmaline its variety of colors. Iron rich crystals are dark: black to blueish black to deep brown. Lithium rich tourmalines can be nearly any color. Bicolored crystals are common and reflect the variable chemistry. Clear tourmaline is actually pretty uncommon. In many tournaline gems the colors will shift depending on the light angle from which its viewed.

According to Egyptian lore the tourmaline, on its long journey up from the center of the Earth, passed through a rainbow, hence its variety of colors. Because of this one name for the stone is "gemstone of the rainbow."

Tourmaline is piezoelectric, which means that the crystal, in response to mechanical stresses such as twisting, can generate an electric charge. One end of the crystal will be positive, the other negative.  Some forms of tourmaline are also pyroelectric, which means they generate this charge when exposed to heat.

A side effect of this electrical capability is that tourmaline has certain electronic applications. Another is that the electrical charge attracts dust. Crystal collection sof tourmaline, under hot lights, will become dusty faster than crystals without this property.

In fact, the Dutch, when they brought the tourmaline to Europe long ago, had a good use for this property. They took a tournaline, heated it, and used it to remove the ash from their meerschaum pipes. They called this amazing gem the aschentrekker.

Its a fairly hard gemstone, running from 7 to 7.5 on the hardness (Mohs) scale. This makes it durable and easy to look after. Combined with the color, the variety, and the ease of cutting, the tournaline is an excellent gemstone.

Tourmaline Jewelry 

One would espect a gem with as much diveristy in color and form as the tourmaline to have quite a variety of jewelry built around that color and form. One would be right.

References

• Tourmaline on Amazon.com
• Wikipedia on Tourmaline
• Gemstone.org