Antique jewelry glossary

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Hematite

See our: hematite jewelry.

An iron ore that is found in many forms:

• in massive form, and when showing a metallic luster called 'specularite'
• in botryoidal or nodular form, sometimes called 'kidney stone'
• in druses of crystals, especially in Cumberland (now Cumbria), England
• as thin, transparent flakes which form a many-petalled rosette, called an 'Alpine rose' or 'iron rose'

Hematite is blue-black, but when in fragments or powder it is blood-red (hence the name, from the Greek haema, blood), and when the stone is rubbed on an unpolished surface it leaves a red streak.

Hematite has been used in jewelry since Egyptian times, as a seal carved in intaglio, as a cameo on a signet ring (often depicting a warrior's head), as a cabochon set in a pendant or finger ring, and as beads strung in a bracelet or necklace (sometimes to imitate a black pearl).

Hematite is found as an inclusion in some aventurine quartz and sunstone. Sometimes called 'iron glance', owing to its metallic luster.

From: An Illustrated Dictionary of Jewelry, autor: Harold Newman, publishers: Thames and Hudson