Eleven types of unusual gemstone jewelry pendants

TIBETAN CORAL?  Not on your life!

This new coral has hit the market, best known is the red color but also in orange and other colors.  This "organic gemstone" is RED HOT on the fashion market and will become heirloom pieces for generations to those who purchase it, even more than turquoise.  Some dealers  tout it as "fossil coral from Tibet", a landlocked country.  What's the scoop?

This is modern octocoral (also known as bamboo coral), genus Isis (NOT fossil coral, by the way, as a brown substance found on it is natural gorgonin which can be burned, proving it to be modern)  being legally harvested from the warm seas of the  IndoPacific region.  It is not an endangered coral.  It grows up to 18" tall as a colony.  This is a picture of this natural coral:

The country of Tibet enters the picture because you can find this coral readily available there for sale in many forms, as they love this organic commodity.  They are also responsible for creating the red DYE used to enhance this lovely gem.   Here are photos of a cross section of this coral once it's dyed, along with a photo of several pieces coated with polyurethane after dying:

Warning!  Some unscrupulous dealers are selling dyed calcite marble as genuine red coral.  There is no pattern visible in these marble beads.  Below is a photo of a few of our genuine coral beads with a faint star pattern that proves it's real coral.   Look for this if you're purchasing coral jewelry to determine its authenticity, along with the small black erosions and irregularities  here and there you will find only on organic coral.

Part of the above information is acknowledged to be from  the article "Landlocked Coral?" by John S. White (former curator-in-charge of Mineral Sciences at the Smithsonian and founder of the Mineralogical Record magazine) in the May 2004 issue of Lapidary Journal

(beautiful pattern)

(Melithaea ochracea), this sponge coral is a gem coral - hard, lives underwater, naturally organically produces tree-like structures, usually found attached to sea floors.  These underwater trees are the byproducts of small, cylindrical, tube-like colonizing sea creaturs called polyps.  The holes in the sponge coral are the homes of these individual polyps.  Unlike most other gem corals, the sponge coral polyp homes rarely grow shut, and these open vacant homes are what have given the sponge coral its name.

Found mainly in the South China Sea, form Taiwan down to Indonesia, the sponge coral has a distinct fan-shaped appearance underwater.  Many ornamental sponge corals have been used for decorative purposes in aquariums, being made into jewelry only in recent years.