Gemstone Beads - The Amazing Journey

The plethora of choices in gemstone beads can occasionally lead to sensory overload. With so many pretty, sparkly, and earthy beads from which to choose where does one begin, and (more importantly) where does one end?

If you have ever wondered just what it took to get that gem bead from its source and into your hands, you are not alone. Consider this a basic overview on how a gemstone bead is created.

Defining the term gemstone is tricky stuff best left to the professional geologists. We will define a gemstone as a mineral or other organic material that is collected and fashioned for human adornment.

This would include a variety of minerals, amber, and pearls. Most minerals are born in the magma underneath the earth's surface.

This "lava soup" is filled with a variety of ingredients that can be combined through a complex combination of heat and pressure within chambers or fissures that form in the underside of the crust. When all the right conditions are present, these elements can begin to grow within the fissures into crystallized mineral formations.

This process can take thousands or millions of years until the formations can be thrust up to the earth's surface through lava flow, mountain shifts, or erosion. Water and wind may then remove the crystals and redeposit them elsewhere.

Some gemstones are further altered (metamorphosized) into new stones by extended contact with water bearing copper or other minerals. This is how turquoise and chrysacolla are formed.

The stones are mined either in their host rock using picks and human hands or in an alluvial (secondary) deposit by sifting through the gravel in a former riverbed, mountain base, or at the ocean's edge.

Gemstones are mined all over the world with a variety of techniques from the most primitive to high tech computerized mining. Once the gemstones are gathered, stonecutters send them in their rough state to various locations for manipulation.

Pearls on the bead market are almost exclusively cultured freshwater varieties coming from pearl "farms" in China. Consistently shaped natural pearls are rare and very expensive.

Freshwater cultured pearl beads are fantastic in their shapes and colors, but most of these innovations are created by human interventions.

Introducing a piece of living mollusk tissue or a small bead into a host mollusk creates a base for the layers of mineral secretion called nacre to surround this irritant and form a pearl.

This nacre is the substance that gives the pearl its iridescence and luster. Once removed from the mollusk the pearls are sorted, tumbled and dried.

They are then dyed, bleached, heat treated or irradiated to create the wide variety of colors seen on the market today.

Amber is a fossilized tree sap that is many millions of years old. It is mainly found in the Baltic region. It is an extremely porous and soft resin, so due consideration should be made when using this material in your designs.

Much of the amber in bead and cabochon form available for purchase today is reconstituted. This means that it is melted down and reformed.

Amber with bugs or other natural inclusions is very rare and valuable and highly unlikely to be used for beads.

Much gem bead material is color-enhanced by any variety of methods including dyeing, irradiating, and heat-treating.

Enhancing gemstones is standard practice and has been occurring for many, many years.

Some more common practices include: howlite dyed to look like turquoise, heated amethyst to create citrine, dyed chalcedony to make "black onyx", synthetic or manmade hematite (hemalyke), color enhanced rose quartz, dyed lapis, dyed abalone shell/mother of pearl, and irradiated blue topaz.

Once the beads are finished being fashioned, they are temporarily strung for shipment.

The beads are then sent to larger bead suppliers or wholesalers and finally the bead arrives to the retailer for you to purchase.