Gemstones: Jasper

 Jasper brings joy into life.

Color: Jasper exhibits various colors, but chiefly brick red to brownish red. It owes its color to admixed hematite, but when it occurs with clay admixed, the color is a yellowish white or gray, or with goethite, a brown or yellow. Often jasper is multi-colored.

Description: SiO₂ Jasper is opaque, fine-grained or dense variety of the silica mineral chert. Jasper, long used for jewelry and ornamentation, has a dull lustre but takes a fine polish. Its hardness and other physical properties are those of quartz.

The name's origin: The name jasper is from the Greek iaspis.

Care and treatment: The polish on jasper will often be washed away in water. Clean your jasper jewelry with a soft dry cloth.

From the stone history: In ancient writings the term jasper was chiefly applied to translucent and brightly colored stones, particularly chalcedony, but also was applied to the opaque jasper.
Jasper was known as the great "rain-bringer" in the fourth century.
For thousands of years, black jasper was used to test gold-silver alloys for their gold content. Rubbing the alloys on the stone, called a touchstone, produces a streak the color of which determines the gold content within one part in one hundred.
Jasper is one of the gemstones, that used in commesso, also called florentine mosaic. Commesso is a technique of fashioning pictures with thin, cut-to-shape pieces of brightly colored, semiprecious stones, developed in Florence in the late 16th century. The stones most commonly used are agates, quartzes, chalcedonies, jaspers, granites, porphyries, petrified woods, and lapis lazuli. Commesso pictures, used mainly for tabletops and small wall panels, range from emblematic and floral subjects to landscapes.

Shopping guide: Jasper is a very pretty, inexpensive gemstone. It is usually worn as beads or cabochon jewelry.

Healing ability: Medicinal values were long attributed to jasper, including a belief that wearing it strengthened the stomach. Jasper was also believed to cure gynecological problems.

Mystical power: Leopard skin Jasper is said to bring one what they need. Poppy Jasper is said to help bring joy into life. Opalite Jasper is said to help one sleep.
Jasper was thought to drive away evil spirits and protect against snake and spider bites.

Deposits: Jasper is common and widely distributed, occurring chiefly as veinlets, concretions, and replacements in sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, as in the Urals, North Africa, Sicily, France, India, Venezula and Germany.
Some varieties are color-banded, and beautiful examples of jasperized fossil wood are found in Arizona, U.S. In USA Jasper is also found in California, Utah and Wyoming.

 

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