FIRE AGATE
There are two distinct cultures in the world of colored stone retailing—the jewelry store and the rock shop. Rarely do they converge, although there have been crossovers from one to other—usually from the rock shop to the jewelry store world and almost never the other way around.
Each of these cultures has gems that are associated with Rock shops, with their large collector/hobbyist clienteles, re identified with gems traditionally labeled "ornamental" because they’re non-facetable, exotic-looking and inexpensive. few of these so - called ornamental stones like malachite and rhodochrosite have earned small, mostly token niches r mainstream jewelry stores.
But a lot more of these rock shop exclusives merit serious attention from jewelers, preferably ones with enough design savvy to know how to sell customers on the idea of buying )ff-the-beaten-track stones.
If you’re such a jeweler and you’re looking for a men’s phenomenon stone to set you apart from the competition, we call your attention to fire agate, a chalcedony that at its best rivals top opal for mysterious color play—at a fraction of top opal’s cost. "It amazes me that this gem has never found a wider audience as an opal substitute," says Ray Zajicek, quatorian Imports Inc., Dallas.
That time might be now, given the scarcity and expense of both fine black and white opal, plus a noticeable fall from favor of fire agate in the rock shop world.
LIMITED HISTORY
has not been easy to light a lasting fire, in terms of public Interest, for fire agate. No major gemologist or gem scholar ias, to our knowledge, championed this stone. To the contrary, most have been mum, or nearly so, on the subject. For starters, fire agate isn’t even mentioned in Max Bauer’s 1896 masterpiece, ‘Precious Stones." And it receives only five lines widely the most widely acclaimed modern survey of gemology, Robert Webster’s "Gems."
Bauer can possibly be excused for his oversight since the stone may not have yet been discovered when the German put his eloquent pen to paper. Lapidary Bruce Iden, Boulder, :olo., thinks fire agate is a post-World War II find. "I don’t remember hearing about it much before 1960, when lots of rough started coming out of Mexico," he recalls.
Shortly thereafter, smaller deposits were reported in Arizona and New Mexico. "Given the fact that it is mined only in the Southwest, it caught on basically as a regional item ," says Zajicek, who still has most of a 300 -pound lot of fire agate rough he bought on speculation 15 years ago. I’ve waited a long time for the stone to make a bigger splash, it never has."
If anything, fire agate’s appeal as a Southwestern men’s gem has fizzled in recent years. "The stone needs a new marketing angle if there’s going to be a comeback," Zajicek says. For Zajicek, the angle to pursue is as an American continent opal substitute. "Fire agate has got the beauty of opal, with better hardness and durability, at far less cost."
FOLLOWING THE LAYERS
Fire agate owes its shimmering brilliance and shifting colors to inner layers which have been thinly coated with an extremely iridescent material called "limonite." In fine pieces,
this iridescent layering is continuous throughout. More often, however, it runs in patches or when sustained is weak.
All of this makes cutting fire agate one of the less enviable of lapidary tasks. "It is a very difficult stone to cut," says Loreen Haas, Crown Gems, Sherman Oaks, Calif. "You have to adhere to the curvature of the color layerings, which severely limits the number of cabochons you can make."
Instead, cutters must go with the flow of the stone, "carving more than cutting it," notes Iden.
The end-result is an abundance of curvy, asymmetrical shapes suitable for custom crafting, not mass production. This lack of calibrated sizes has been the single greatest bar to jewelry-maker discovery and use of this chalcedony. Indeed, the vast number of free -form fire agates constitutes one of the gem world’s least publicized stockpiles and explains fire agate’s attractively low prices. At such prices, fire agate demands some attention from retail jewelers, but obviously ones trained in jewelry arts. Few of these stones lend themselves to conventional mountings. Haas recently designed a combination fire agate and accent diamond piece, "totally one of a kind," for a customer, and lden made two fire agate pendants.
THE PALETTE OF FIRE
Descriptions of fine fire agate sound as if they were drawn from centuries of opal aesthetics. Dealers talk of color play in terms of "broad flash" and "pin fire," rating its beauty as if they were evaluating fine opal.
At its best, fire agate has ember-like flashes of red and orange that seem to glow in a manner reminiscent of white-hot coals. The experience of seeing such a stone is, in our opinion, unforgettable and explains at a glance the magnet ism of fire agate for men.Not all fine fire agates resemble burning coals, however. Strong mixtures of blue and green are also very desirable. Indeed, cutter Iden says strong blue is the most sought-after color in fire agate after red. The least desirable color, every one agrees, is brown.
Besides color play, color pattern is important. We’ve heard fire agate’s color patterns described variously as resembling "lizard skin" and "raw brains." In any case, the color pattern should be well-defined and even throughout the stone.
Finding ideal fire agate with full color play running across the stone, in usable shapes especially, is a bit of a chore!
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i couldnt agree with this article more
