UNIQUE BY NATURE
Created by way of living creatures, jet, coral, amber, and pearls have special significance in the world of jewelry.
What do coral, jet, amber and pearls have in common? Most gems are, technically, inorganic; that is, they are mineral compounds formed from lifeless chemicals occurring naturally in the earth. Basically, rocks. But coral, jet, amber, and pearls are different, because they were actually alive at one time. They are the organic gems.
JET
In the last issue, we talked about amber, and how it was formed from the sap of now-extinct trees. Jet comes from trees, too, but, like coal, is the fossilized wood itself. (Jet is a type of lignite, made of carbon, so it’s completely different from the agatized material we think of as petrified…
