PURPLE GEMSTONES: 10 Most Celebrated

Purple gemstones sit between ruby-red and sapphire-blue in the color wheel. From the rings of bishops to Cleopatra’s seal ring, purple gems are highly popular since antiquity. Along with lilac and lavender, which of the purple gemstones throughout history did humans consider the most beautiful?

10th Most Celebrated of Purple Gemstones: Jade

Extremely rare among the purple gemstones is the purple jade. Also known as turkiyenite, this purple stone ranges in shade from lavender to dark purple.

While purple jade found use as a gem only since the 1980s, there came an allusion to this stone three centuries earlier. Cleandro Arnobio, to whom was sent a specimen of jadeite from America prior to 1602, relates an account about the stone by Aldobrando, a physician and physicist of Bologna, Italy. Aldobrando says that the stone usually has a purple shade, almost like porphyry, with various figures of herbs, flowers, knots and Arabic characters in a yellow color. He says further that there were stones of a darker hue, with protuberances and bands of yellow, as well as black spots. In another variety, a yellow stain with pittings and hollows occurs in the midst of the purple color.

Jade resembling the purple stone that, as Aldobrando described, bears yellowish patches does occur. This comes in rock consisting of a mixture of jadeite and quartz. The warm-colored inclusion is cinnabar, a toxic ore of mercury, which would have been rather dangerous had the stone been actually powdered and swallowed as Aldobrando prescribed for the cure of the liver. The purple gem occurs in Bursa, a region in Turkey, hence the names turkiyenite and Turkish purple jade. Since the stone likewise occurs in a pale shade, the Turkish gem also goes by the name lavender jade.

9th. Sugilite

Sugilite is a purple stone discovered only in 1944. The purple gem obtained its  name from Ken-ichi Sugi, the Japanese petrologist who discovered the mineral in the Iwagi Islet of Japan.

Sugilite is a mostly opaque stone ranging in shade from pink to purple. Grape jelly purple is a color that the stone is prized for. The deeper its color, the more valuable a sugilite is. However, sugilite frequently occurs with a mottled appearance. Spots of dark purple standing out from light areas bring down the value of the stone. Though mostly opaque, sugilite also occurs in translucent crystals, which would be more suitable for jewelry.

8th. Purple Chalcedony

While best known in white and blue, chalcedony also produces purple gemstones. The ancients knew translucent or opaque quartz, as we define chalcedony today, but under different names.

In Rome, the best jasper had a shade of purple. Jasper was not necessarily opaque then, but was rather often translucent. Hence, in the old nomenclature, what we call lavender amethyst and banded amethyst would fall under jasper. The amethyst of the ancients was always transparent; thus, purple quartz that is translucent or opaque would be classified as jasper. These opaque and translucent chalcedonies must have been the purple jaspers that the Romans esteemed the most.

In addition, jasper and agate that display patches of purple would likewise fall into this category. The Romans obtained their purple jasper from Turkey, which also produced a purplish blue variety. Under the name agate, purple-and-white variegated chalcedony was found in Troezen of Greece, while a paler variety came from Corinthia.

In a curious part of an 11th-century lapidary, Marbod speaks of a purple chrysoprase sprinked with yellow specks. Chrysoprase is the green variety of chalcedony, more approriately called prase in a darker hue. This description of chrysoprase as a purple stone was distinct to Marbod’s account. When speckled with another color, the green chrysoprase is called plasma. The “golden stars” on Marbod’s purple chrysoprase may have stemmed from an interpretation of its Latin name chrysoprasus, the word chryso- having meant “golden.” However, the purple color remains rather amiss given that the other half of the name, -prase, refers to the plant leek and indicates a green color similar to its leaves. If such a stone did exist, this would be described today as a yellow-speckled purple agate, which is the banded variety of chalcedony.

7th. Tanzanite

Tanzanite is a popular gemstone discovered only in 1967. While popularly a blue gem, tanzanite ranges in shade from blue to violet, though a violet stone is prized less than the blue crystal. Moreover, tanzanite is noted for its remarkably strong pleochroism, in which a single stone changes from blue to violet, and even burgundy, depending on the crystal’s orientation.

Tanzanite, however, is a relatively new gem. The ancients did not have the chance to appreciate this purple stone.

6th. Alexandrite

Alexandrite is a color-changing gem of the family chrysoberyl. While most turn from green during the day to red at night, some stones change to a shade of purple under incandescent light. This earned alexandrite the description “emerald by day and amethyst by night.”

5th Most Celebrated of Purple Gemstones: Opal

A singular opal in the Middle Ages became so famous that it earned a name of its own. Set in the crown of the Roman emperor, the stone was never found anywhere else, and was hence called Orphanus, or “Orphan.” While Magnus of the 1100s described the gem as wine-red in color, Leonardus over 200 years later relates that the Orphanus had a violet hue.

Granted that the Orphanus was not purple but a wine-red, purple was well known in antiquity among the play of colors seen on an opal. Thus Pliny of 1st-century Rome wrote of opali, “They display the more subtle fires of the garnet, the flashing purple of the amethyst and the sea-green tint of the emerald — all combined together in incredible brilliance.” Moreover, the dominant colors of a less brilliant opal called paederos were a mixture of sky-blue and purple, the emerald-green of opalus absent. It is interesting to note that a paederos whose brilliance is darkened by the color of wine — thus turned closer to purple — was superior to another whose brilliance is diluted with a watery tint. In addition, under the name panchrus, later corrupted into pantherus, opal is described as occurring in pale purple.

4th. Purple Garnet

The best garnet in antiquity had purple in it. There were varying accounts as to how much purple this most excellent variety should display. While in the beginning the purple was limited to a changing shade or marginal tint, garnet was later described to be entirely purple.

Transparent red stones in Rome went by the name carbunculus, meaning “small coal.” Pliny describes the finest of these as the “‘amethyst-colored stones,’ namely those in which the fiery red shade passes at the edge into amethyst-violet.” This violet tint earned this red garnet the name violaceous, which Magnus of the 1200s said was “more precious than other kinds of granatus.” Over 200 years later, Leonardus spoke of this most precious variety as a reddish violet and put its name down as “Surian.” Variously rendered Syrian, Sirian and Siriam, this name referred to almandine garnet from Sirian, a city in Pegu of present-day Myanmar.

Purple stones come from a variety of garnet called almandine, which was indeed the most prized variety of garnet. Almandine varies in shade from the deepest crimson to a violet purple. When entirely purple, the stone can closely resemble the amethyst. A great luster combined with the purple color also makes the almandine difficult to distinguish from purple spinel. Even when red, the color of almandine tends to have the violet undertone of ruby, and accordingly fetched a higher value compared to other red garnets.

The blood-red variety of garnet, pyrope, also produces purple stones.

3rd. Purple Spinel

A rare variety of spinel is a deep violet. In ancient times, a spinel with a purple sheen must have been among the varieties of the gem called lychnis, particularly the one that “shines out with purple brightness.” Pliny described the lychnis as a fiery gem that obstinately resists engraving, on account of a level of hardness that was true of both ruby and spinel.

Violet spinel also occurs in a pale shade, lilac. Like the pale red spinel, the lilac spinel went by the name “balas ruby.” The gem collector King thus described balais as “often quite of a lilac color (purpura).”

Spinel was quite valuable that the ancients counterfeited the gem using almandine garnet and amethyst.

2nd. Purple Sapphire

The ancients often compared sapphire with amethyst, and regarded sapphire as an inferior variety of the latter. The reason, Isidore relates, was that “there is something not entirely fire-like in its purple, but that it possesses rather the color of wine.”

In the Middle Ages, the purple sapphires that India exported to Europe came under the label not of sapphire, but of amethyst, specifically “Oriental amethyst.” C. W. King describes the Oriental amethyst as a stone, “being in reality a purple sapphire,” whose “purple has little of the redness of that seen in the common amethyst, but is rather an extremely deep shade of violet.” King says further that the Oriental amethyst is “a much rarer stone than the ordinary blue sapphire, but very inferior to it in beauty.”

Purple sapphire, in fact, comes from the mineral corundum, which also produces ruby, known in Rome by the name carbunculus. The finest carbuncle was one with a violet sheen, or in Pliny’s words “amethyst-colored stones.” Though this generally referred to almandine garnet from India, ruby also occurs with a violet tint.

Arabs and Persians knew that ruby and sapphire are the same mineral. They also knew that the same mineral produces purple stones. They referred to these stones by the name yacut, from which the Latin hyacinthus must have originated. Ruby was the most valuable of the yacut. In describing the different species of the precious corundum, Ben Masur classified the purple sapphire as a variety of ruby.

While considered inferior in India, “purple ruby” sometimes enjoyed the same prestige in Europe as the red gem. Where the coronation ring of the English queen had a red ruby, that of the king sported a large violet table-cut ruby, engraved with a plain cross.

Most Celebrated of Purple Gemstones: Amethyst

Of the purple gemstones, people deeply revered the beauty of the amethyst throughout history. The ancients made wide use of this purple stone as a gem, and gave the purple gem immense value in consequence. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans prized the amethyst highly.

The color of amethyst ranges in shade from a light violet to deep purple. The intensity varies from a slightly tinted crystal to one so dark as to be almost opaque. Medieval lapidaries thus understood the color of amethyst to come in all shades of purple and violet, which Marbod of the 11th century detailed in his poem.

The Tyrian purple the rich Amethyst dyes.
Or darker violet charms the gazer’s eyes;
Bright as the niby wine another glows,
Or fainter blush that decks the opening rose;
Another yet displays a lighter shade,
Like drops of wine with fountain streams allayed.

Of the stone’s varieties, the Romans regarded amethyst from India as the best. In Pliny’s words, “the Indian amethyst has the perfect shade of Tyrian purple at its best, and it is this stone that the dye-factories aspire to emulate.” The Tyrian purple was a highly expensive dye obtained from mollusks. Monarchs and nobles along the coasts of the Mediterranean wore clothes dyed with this durable color as indication of high status in the community. In reproducing the Tyrian purple, amethyst shines with a rich color, warm and bright without becoming entirely red. This fiery purple, in turn, became the standard color of the amethyst.

In the 1500s, the best amethyst was midway between purple and violet. Here the grape violet was more valuable than an entirely purple stone. Come the 1900s, the most popular amethysts were a dark reddish purple, the paler stones now less sought after. To this day, the reddish purple amethysts remains the most in demand.

The Beauty of Purple Gemstones

As late as the 1700s, amethyst enjoyed high estimation. A necklace of Queen Charlotte of Great Britain boasts of well-matched amethysts, which were reputedly the most perfect in existence, and accordingly of immense value. Although the amethyst suffered tremendous decline in value, the purple stone remains a celebrated gem. The reason apparently lies in the color. Amethyst is the gemstone popularly representing purple, and people love purple no matter how valuable or affordable the gem is.

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For all the purple stones, see also —

About the Author

Jomar Pandan

Jomar ‘Deomar’ Pandan is the author of Power Birthstone. He’s on the fourth draft of a high-fantasy novel, Cybelym, and the first of a historical fiction, Gem Faerie. He hopes to release a nonfiction book about diamond soon. Follow him for updates. Or see his jewelry and designs.