Tiffany Stones

Tiffany Stone is a purple, blue, yellow and white gem material that can be cut and polished into beads, cabochons and tumbled stones. Its Mohs hardness varies between 5 and 5 1/2, making it a very easy stone to work with. For that reason, Tiffany Stone is best used in pendants, beads, earrings, sculptures, among many other uses. It is a rare and unusual "opalized" (agatized) mineraloid that formed in mineralized nodules called "beryllium nodules."

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Tiffany Stone is composed of varying combinations of minerals such as bertrandite (beryllium silicate), beryl, calcite, chalcedony, cobalt, dolomite, fluorite, manganese oxide, rhodonite, quartz, and zinc. The purple color that characterizes Tiffany Stone was created by fluorine gases, while the distinct black-colored veins were caused by manganese oxide; all of which were sealed within the sedimentary layers, becoming opalized over time.

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The rareness of Tiffany Stone comes from the fact that to date, the only location it has been found is at the Brush Wellman beryllium mine in the Topaz-Spor Mountains of Juab County's Sevier Desert, in western Utah. Beryllium (Be) is a lightweight, high-strength yet brittle alkaline earth metal that is used in structural materials for aircraft, missiles, communication satellites, and space vehicles. Adding to the scarcity is the fact that the extraction process for beryllium involved crushing large quantities of material that yield only 1 to 2 percent of the concentrated ore. This remote mine is now closed to the public.