Natural Strawberry Quartz 0.94ct 6.1mm Round Cut

Cut as a 6.1mm round with a broad table and shallow crown, this strawberry quartz reads warm rose-pink over a paler, slightly milky core. The interior is thickly sown with red inclusions of mixed character: rounded brick-red platelets, angular deep-red chips, and a fine dusting of smaller flecks that crowd more heavily toward the girdle than through the middle. A few of the flatter flakes throw a soft coppery glint when the stone is tilted into the light. The red material is abundant and openly visible, and it carries the whole character of the piece.

That coppery glint is aventurescence: flat inclusions inside the stone reflecting light all at once. In strawberry quartz they are red iron oxides, generally hematite and lepidocrocite, suspended in ordinary rock crystal, and their seed-like scatter is what gave the material its name. This piece comes from Africa and is untreated, which is worth stating because a good deal of what is sold online as strawberry quartz is manufactured glass rather than natural quartz. Quartz sits at 7 on the Mohs scale and sets easily, though a densely included stone like this one is happier in a pendant or a pair of earrings than taking daily knocks on a ring finger.

Natural strawberry quartz, untreated, Africa, sold loose.