Natural Strawberry Quartz 0.87ct 6.2mm Round Cut

The inclusion pattern in this 6.2mm round runs to rods rather than dots. Across a soft salmon-pink body, slender red-brown laths lie at every angle, mixed with rounded orange flecks and a handful of larger, deeper red flakes gathered near the crown. Several of those are strongly reflective and return a clear copper-orange glint under direct light, so the stone shows more brightness from its interior than from its facets. A few dark pinpoints sit among them, and the quartz stays open and see-through in the gaps, heavily included overall at I3.

The copper glints are aventurescence, light bouncing off flat inclusions inside the stone. Here they are red iron oxides, generally hematite and lepidocrocite, and the way they are scattered through clear quartz is what gives the variety its strawberry name. The stone is African and completely untreated, its color coming from the included minerals rather than from any enhancement. With a hardness of 7 it is straightforward to set, and the strong rod pattern shows best in an open setting where light can reach the stone from the side.

Natural strawberry quartz, 6.2mm round, untreated, sold loose.