Image reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Australia.
© All rights reserved.
Elizabeth Macquarie: Earrings
Materials
Citrine
The semiprecious stone citrine is a kind of quartz. Its colour, which varies from yellow to orange through to brown or red, comes from molecules of hydrated iron oxide suspended through the silica crystal. Like all varieties of quartz, citrine is hard and scratch-resistant. Citrine is prized for its resemblance to the rarer semiprecious stone topaz. Since the mid-C18th, other more common stones have been treated with high temperatures to change them to the colour of citrine.
Bibliography
"Citrine". New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Micropaedia. 15th ed., 2003.
Arem, Joel E. Color Encyclopedia of Gemstones. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1987.
Copyright © 2011 Macquarie University. All rights reserved.
