Home / citrine

Tag: citrine

The Perfect Citrine Plume Agate Geode

The Perfect Citrine Plume Agate Geode

By /December 22, 2025 /1 comment /Cut Rocks

Rock #6504 While cutting Carver Agate Field geodes this summer, I saw what to me was the perfect citrine plume agate geode. Some explanation: Natural citrine, which is normally a yellow silica (quartz), is quite rare. This is because much of the citrine seen in jewelry today started out as amethyst which was then heat treated to turn it the yellow citrine color. Natural citrine is quite valuable. So if natural citrine is fairly rare, nearly transparent citrine comprising the entire geode is doubly rare. This citrine geode has added rarity—a perfectly formed golden plume agate. It is also of considerable interest that the nearly transparent citrine allows one to see into the citrine surrounding the geode cavity which glows white from the quartz crystals lining the inside of the cavity. In very bright light, other plumes can be seen deeper in the citrine surrounding the cavity. Lastly, while fractures […]

Read More

????????????????????????????????????

Paisley Agate?

By /June 28, 2023 /1 comment /Cut Rocks

The winter storms tree damage is all cleaned up, processed to saw logs and split firewood. Three large fires that I lit burned up all the brush. So, I had a bit of time to cut and polish more of The Carver agates. Rock #5171 : Paisley AgateI found it, cut it, and named it The paisley agate was named by me. It is a bit dark for inclusion in jewelry, but I liked it because the pattern reminded me of the paisley so popular in my childhood. Rock #5161 Photo 5161 is a heel grind of a small agate nodule which yielded ‘sunflowers’ in a pretty blue-appearing stone. The blue color of the stone was enhanced greatly from a pale white to the blue that you see due to my photographing the stone on a very foggy Maine day. When photographed in my shop on a sunny day, the […]

Read More

A First! Ametrine Geode Discovered on The Carver!

A First! Ametrine Geode Discovered on The Carver!

By /June 16, 2021 /0 comments /Geology

Ametrine is a single stone which is part amethyst (purple quartz) and part citrine (yellow quartz). While I have found some great amethyst geode crystals on The Carver, citrine geode crystals are rare indeed. The most exotic and rare was the perfect citrine crystal I named The Unicorn after the mystical single-horned animal which has never been, in fact, found in nature. Rock & Gem magazine featured this stone which can be seen on this website. What has until now never been seen by me in the thousands of nodules and geodes I have discovered on The Carver and cut open is the combination of purple micro-crystalline quartz and citrine banding in a single band in a single geode. Pictured here is 1/2 of the ametrine geode (photo #4225) and three cabs from the same geode which I have cut and polished. As you view each photo, the citrine portion […]

Read More

The Scepter

The Scepter

By /January 21, 2018 /3 comments /Cut Rocks

Two exciting new specimens from The Carver! One is a spectacular citrine (yellow quartz) ‘scepter’. Scepter quartz is a first and second generation of quartz crystal growth, one on top of the other, with the second generation, or top of the scepter, being larger than the first generation crystal. The name scepter is taken from the scepters of lore held by kings. Clear quartz (uncolored), amethyst (purple quartz), and smokey quartz scepters are not extremely rare. Citrine, which is a light yellow or gold-brown quartz and, according to Walter Schumann (who I think has written one of the best treatises on gemstones), on page 120 of Gemstones of the World, “natural citrine is rare. Most commercial citrine are heat treated amethyst or smokey quartz”. This scepter specimen has not been treated in any way. Therefore, its coloration as a natural citrine is rare and even more unusual having formed as […]

Read More