PERIDOT
Unfairly referred to as a 'poor man's emerald', gem quality Peridot is in fact extremely rare and very, very beautiful. The peridot is one of the few gemstones which come in one colour only. The rich, green colour with the slight tinge of gold is caused by fine traces of iron. From a chemical point of view, peridot is an iron magnesium silicate. The intensity of the colour depends on the amount of iron present. An ideal gemstone colour to go with that light summer wardrobe.
In ancient times Peridots came from one source, a deposit on a small volcanic island in the Red Sea, some 45 miles off the Egyptian coast at Aswan, which was not rediscovered until about 1900. It didn't take long to exhaust that deposit.
Fortunately (for us) in the middle of the 1990s, a sensationally rich deposit of the finest peridots was discovered 4,000 metres up in the mountains of Pakistan. In tough climatic conditions which permitted the gemstones to be mined only during the summer months, the unusually large, fine crystals and fragments were brought down into the valley. These stones were finer than anything that had ever been seen before. And deposits are so rich that the demand for peridots can, for the present, easily be satisfied.