Tons of the stuff are mined every year, but chances are great that you won’t see a single piece of rose quartz, loose or set, in any mainstream jewelry store. The gem’s conspicuous absence from retailer showcases raises the following questions: Where does it all go? Who sells it?
The search for rose quartz vendors takes one into the separate world of gem and mineral distributors and retailers, just next door to the one jewelers know but running parallel to it. “I have store-owner customers who are crazy about rose quartz,” boasts importer Damian Quinn of Talisman Trading Co., San Diego, Calif., who may very well be the United States’ only specialist in this gem.
Most of Quinn’s retailer customers, it turns out, run gift and tourist shops, which fact instantly explains the dearth of rose quartz in mainstream jewelry stores. Even so, don’t ask Quinn about the run-of-the-mill bead and cabochon rose quartz that you’ll likely see in gift shops. You know the kind? Milky with colors that remind you of every gaudy pink from that of rouge to cotton candy. In other words, the very kind of rose quartz that most who are writing about it have in mind. Who would know, until aficionados like Quinn set them straight, that this gem has its own premium grades suitable for jewelry stores?
It is this kind of rose quartz to which Quinn restricts himself. Doubtless, many will find the very idea of “premium-grade rose quartz” a contradiction in terms. Never mind. Tino Hammid’s picture of a faceted rose quartz on the page opposite might make scoffers feel kinder toward a gem “whose only drawback is its surname,” quips dealer Ray Zajicek, Equatorian Imports, Dallas.
The gem’s name has emboldened dealer Tom Banker, Pink Enterprises, Lake Forest, Calif., to re-christen the gem “pink velvet” for his ambitious new line of rose quartz jewelry featuring high-grade material from Madagascar. It is just such creativity that may soon earn rose quartz its first serious foothold in the world of mainstream jewelry retailing.
Nature’s Leading Star Gem
In the gem and mineral show world which Damian Quinn calls home, high-grade rose quartz has long had a large and loyal following. There the idea of proselytizing for the gem seems pointless when connoisseurs already pay tens of thousands of dollars for star rose quartz spheres the size of baby grapefruits.
Usually, however, star rose quartzes are pebble-sized, perfect for use in jewelry, especially with prices of only a few dollars per carat. In any case, jewelers on the lookout for affordable star stones might be interested to know that rose quartz is perhaps nature’s most abundant star gem. (The star-effect, also known as “asterism,” is caused by internal groupings of microscopic needles, often rutile, that reflect light in ray-like patterns when stones are cut in rounded and cabochon forms. Sapphire is the best known star gem.)
A series of spectacularly large star rose quartz spheres, all of them cut by Talisman Trading, were the talk of the Munich Gem Show in 1989. It was the rough, 13 tons of it, for these spheres, found in Bahia, Brazil, five years ago, that persuaded Quinn and his Brazilian-based partner, Greg Martino, to diversify from tourmaline into rose quartz. The jump made sense since the two gems’ species are often found mixed together in the pegmatites (crystallized dikes or pockets), mostly in Brazil and, to a lesser extent, Madagascar, where rose quartz is mined.
But if star stones aren’t of interest, you might consider faceted rose quartz, something few jewelers have seen and even fewer know exists. Here the gem has advantages that, once known, could change its status overnight.
A Chance for Prestige
In recent years, rose quartz with unusually high transparency has been coming with some regularity from Brazil. It is this superb material that attracts top-notch faceters like Richard Homer. “Rose quartz offers the cutter the closest thing to absolute freedom of any gem,” he explains. “Since it’s so inexpensive, the cutter can sacrifice as much as 90% of the rough in pursuit of perfection.”
Yet even when most of the rough has been laboriously whittled away, the end result is still startlingly affordable. Stones in the 7-carat size range the oval the shown here rarely cost more than $300 total. Homer says the time spent making the concave facets on the stone’s pavilion add to its price.
“Concave facets impart a more ethereal and evenly diffused reflection of light throughout the stone,” he insists. “This is preferable for a soft-colored gem like rose quartz whose color is often overwhelmed by the harsh reflections of light from standard flat facets.”
Because the pink of rose quartz is generally no stronger than a blush, especially in faceted material, larger sizes are recommended for jewelry because they have the body mass to withstand the color-bleaching effect of light reflecting through them. However, stones from Madagascar compensate for their lightness of color in standard sizes by being very crystalline and transparent. It is these stones, with their sheen-like pink, that Tom Banker has dubbed “pink velvet.” At $3 to $5 per carat, these stones make the most persuasive case yet for rose quartz as a facetable jewelry stone.
For the most part, however, jewelers will have to make do with cabochons. Although South Dakota is common on strong as a source of rose quartz, it, like Brazil, produces very little facet-grade material. Nevertheless, swelling world production ensures enough better-grade rose quartz to support a commercial market in decent faceted rose quartz. Word just has to get out.
Times have never been better for rose quartz to become a mainstay pink gem. Working to its benefit is the fact that no single species can meet the demand for affordable pink stones the way amethyst has for purple and topaz for blue. Faceted rose quartz could certainly beef up supplies of pink—or, at the very least, pinkish—gems.
So while faceted rose quartz is probably not ever going to be as plentiful as rhodolite or tourmaline, it could easily play a bigger role than either kunzite or morganite. “Kunzite is helpful but it fades and morganite is usually far too pale,” Homer says. “Rose quartz is every bit as pretty as either kunzite or morganite and far more durable than kunzite.” Last but not least, this quartz costs a fraction of either the spodumene or the beryl.
Please note: this profile was originally published in 1992 in Modern Jeweler’s ‘Gem Profiles/2: The Second 60’, written by David Federman with photographs by Tino Hammid.
The 7.14-carat rose quartz shown in the header image is courtesy of J. Gregor & Co. It was cut by Richard Homer.
