Translucent Hammer Earrings

This item was handcrafted with care and may have minor colour or decoration anomalies or defects. These inconsistencies are the consequence of human intervention in the process, and they add to the completed product’s charm while insuring you get a one-of-a-kind piece.

Citrine :The cause of the color is still under debate. Like smoky quartz, natural citrines pale when heated above 200-500°C and turn yellow again when irradiated (Lehmann, 1970), and they also slowly pale in UV light. This indicates the presence of color centers. At least some citrine is colored by aluminum-based and irradiation-induced color centers related to those found in smoky quartz (Lehmann, 1972; Maschmeyer et al., 1980). Accordingly, transitions to smoky quartz (“smoky citrine”) exist, many citrines show smoky phantoms. There appear to be at least two types of yellow Al-based color centers with different thermal stability (Schmetzer, 1988). Since the yellow color centers are often more stable than the smoky color centers, some smoky quartz can be turned into citrine by careful heating (Nassau and Prescott, 1977). Natural citrine, as well as citrine produced by heating smoky quartz, is dichroic in polarized light.

It has also been suggested that iron is the cause of color, as artificial crystals grown in an iron-bearing solution turn out orange. However, the dichroic behavior of the lab-grown crystals differs from that in natural citrine (Rossmann, 1994), and the UV-sensitivity of natural citrines indicates that the color is not simply caused by built-in trace elements.

Citrine can be found in the same geological environments as smoky quartz and is often associated and intergrown with it. Contrary to amethyst, citrine crystals may show a macromosaic structure and become very large (meter-size crystals of good quality have been found Minas Gerais, Brazil)