Avoid the heat with these cool volcanic gemstone jewelry pieces.
Recently, we enjoyed a trip to Hawaii, the Big Island.
Besides being in paradise, we witnessed the island’s Kīlauea Volcano lava lake.
-photo, Brenna Pakes
Seeing an active volcano is amazing and inspired me to write about the gemstones that form from them.
Jewelry From Lava
Highly recognizable, lava is used as a gem material. The black beads are pitted from the porous voids left when the lava was cooling.
Black lava beads add an intriguing organic quality to jewelry, don’t you think?
When volcanoes erupt rapidly and violently, like Mount St. Helen’s, lava material cools so rapidly that it forms glass.
Obsidian is the result of rapidly cooled volcanic material.
Colors of obsidian range from black to brown to greenish brown.
Just like any other form of glass, obsidian is fairly fragile, breaks easily, and has a hardness between 5-6.
Some obsidian forms with small white crystals against black that look like snowflakes, hence, snowflake obsidian.
Shortly after the eruption of Mount St. Helen’s, it was found that when the ashes were subjected to high temperatures, a green glass was formed.
Trademarked as Helenite, various minerals are added to volcanic ash that alter the resulting color.
The most popular is an emerald green, with other varieties like blue and red.
Gems on Fire
Mexican fire opal looks like frozen lava. Ironically, fire opal’s origins began in a volcanic environment.
Water and the type of minerals that erupt from a volcano’s lava contribute to its forming a solid gel material with the same structure and similar make up to all other opals.
Cool Volcanic Jewelry
Even if you just came along to look, now you know the gems that form from a volcano’s creations!
To shop any of the featured jewelry items in this post, click on their associated links to be directed to the artist or jeweler for purchase.