Topic: Latest Monart purchase - today

[orangeglass]

But I haven't got a copy.
What exactly is aventurine?

Roberta

[orangeglass]

Okay, apparantly Aventurine is a variety of Quartz characterized by bright inclusions of Mica or other minerals that give a shimmering or glistening effect to the stone, most commonly green, though also occurring in blue, red to reddish-brown, dusty purple, orange or peach, yellow, and silver gray.

Now I have learnt something new 
Now I just need  Lustrousstone to give me a lesson in Uranium 

Roberta

[KevinH]

Roberta, you missed out one of common colours for aventurine - gold.

And also note that many Americans refer to it as "adventurine".

[Lustrousstone]

Aventurine in glass is a manmade though and based on copper or other metals  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldstone_(gemstone)

What do you want to know about uranium?

[orangeglass]

Kevin - isn't the "gold" the reddish brown I mention that is copper  ?
Goldstone or aventurine is either copper based giving the colour most commonly seen in Monart, cobalt gives a blue, manganese gives a purple (both appearing more "silvery"), green goldstone forms its reflective particles from chromium oxides rather than the elemental metal. If the copper based one is overheated, past the melting point of copper, it can change to a blue / green colour (put very simply).
What was used for the red one Frank mentions?

Why is Uranium used in glass, what's he difference between the yellow and green? Was it safe for the glass workers?

Roberta

[Lustrousstone]

I'll email you some good links

[flying free]

The 'gold' aventurine as far as I know is made using copper however it's not reddish brown, at least not in the pieces I have with aventurine in them. 
It photographs extremely badly, but in real life the aventurine in the pieces of glass I have are bright shiny sparkly gold.

However, from reading that article, it does seem that once the aventurine is made, some parts of the final lump can be better than others (it says in the wikipedia article the heart of the mass can be the best bit).  Therefore if the worst bits of the mass are used then perhaps it's cheaper and not quite as beautiful(dull browny in colour)? 
Also if aventurine is then used in glass, then  as I understand it, if it is not used at the correct temperatures, it can appear dull and darker (burnt? lol) in the finished article.  I see this in some earlier Chinese glass (Dalian examples that were confused for V Nason Avventurine pieces) that used a lot of aventurine - it appears brown rather than gold in the finished piece where the Nason Avventurine pieces are utterly superb in their 'sparkliness'.

I have spent weeks trying to get my camera to work efficiently to photograph an Italian 19th century paperweight I have with aventurine in, to try and show it off to it's true effect.
This is the best one I can get (attached).  In real life it's effect on the eye is  superb, really  , it's a mass of sparkly shiny lights.

[flying free]

These are pics of some of the V Nason Avventurine pieces I also owned, but at that point had not worked out how to photograph them effectively.
The aventurine in them is utterly superb.  As you can see, they don't photograph well- I suspect that anyone who buys a good aventurine piece online is always delighted with their purchase, because it's just not possible to convey in a photograph the beauty of it on the eye.  But it's definitely not reddish brown.
m

[glassobsessed]

It can be distinctly coppery in colour, as in these goblets.

John

[Gary]

The use of red aventurine was sparsely used by the Ysart's in the Monart range, though i believe Paul used it in his paperweights.

Whilst checking what colours were in a small Monart bowl in todays sunlight, something sparkled inside the bowl.
I took some photos with a macro lens, the first one is what I believe to be red aventurine, the second is gold aventurine.
The actual size of of the red adventurine is 1cm long.
Gary