What the heck is petalite??

[Luann Udell]

Okay, I used to be fairly up on minerals and semi-precious stones.  But I can't keep up anymore.  

What the heck is petalite?  I googled it and found beads in a sort of olive green, and a very pretty capri blue.  I found another site selling just stones, not beads, and it looks like very pale rose quartz.  So I'm guessing the other colors are dyed....??

 Where is it from?  When did it entire the market?  Do you carry it?  (Just checked--nope.)

[Russ Nobbs]

Seems like they crank out new "stones" faster than we can add them to the gem index!

We do add a lot of new stones and dyed materials to the mix we carry for the trunk shows that we don't add to our regular on-line stock. I don't always see them unless there is some question about the name or enhancement method. I'll see what I can find out about petalite from Karin, our gemstone buyer.

One of my favorite tricks to tracking down stones is to google the name followed by the word mineral. That eliminates a lot of sites selling stuff made from the stone. In this case googling  "petalite mineral " pops up with http://www.mindat.org/min-3171.html with a picture of a relatively boring specimen but indicating that it's been around for a while.

It also finds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petalite where I learn that "also known as castorite, is a lithium aluminium tectosilicate mineral LiAlSi4O10, crystallizing in the monoclinic system. Petalite is a member of the feldspathoid  group. It occurs as colorless, grey, yellow, yellow grey, to white tabular crystals and columnar masses. Occurs in lithium-bearing pegmatites with spodumene, lepidolite, and tourmaline. Petalite is an important ore of lithium, and is converted to spodumene and silica by roasting. The colorless varieties are often used as gemstones."

[Luann Udell]

Yeah, I saw the wiki entry and said, "....wha'?....."   

It's like the dinosaurs, I guess.  Every year we find out old ones never existed (brontosaurus was a fake??) and new ones roll out.

[Russ Nobbs]

Karin, our gem buyer, was slightly familiar with it but said we'd never carried it as cash 'n carry stock. She didn't think it was dyed. Reading some of the same resources we looked at she said "i think it can be pink , gray, almost blue, slightly greenish, peach, dark gray oh yes, and clear"

In part, this is driven by buyers and beaders who always ask "What's new?"

One of our staff just came back from a visit to Seattle's Pike Place Market with a lovely Spiderweb Obsidian hand flaked knife in an antler handle. None of us had seen Spiderweb Obsidian before. The artist said some of the material was recently found near Yakima, WA as well as the original find in Mexico.

Again, our friend Google helped us out with: "Obsidian is a natural volcanic glass. This glassy, lustrous mineral is found in lava flows. Obsidian is produced when lava cools very quickly. The lava cools so quickly that no crystals can form. Spiderweb Obsidian was recently discovered in Chihuahua, Mexico. Only a small small amount of rough is coming out! It is a lovely midnight blue with sky blue "webbing", but very hard to photograph!"
-- http://www.oakrocks.net/servlet/the-2830/Spiderweb-Obsidian-3.5-inch/Detail

The knife blade looked similar to the description: nearly black with very fine light blue-white traceries or webbing.