Samson Jewellery - Birth Stone
August / Peridot

Oscar Wilde described the green of peridot as 'pistaccio green'.   This was poetic licence since it is in fact a bottlegreen stone with an oily sheen.   Peridot is softer than quartz and therefore too soft for a ring stone; it has little lustre but is nonetheless a pretty stone.  Peridot is occasionally called olivine, but this name is also sometimes applied to the rare demantoid garnet.  The main source of peridot historically is the island of St John off the coast of Egypt in the Red Sea, but the stone is also found in the USA and in Australia.  Brown peridot is rarely found, bu many of the green stones have a brown tinge.  Such stones are less desirable and less valuable than those of an overall green colour.  Very large crystals of peridot are occasionally found and there is a cut stone of 319 carats in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington.  The most effective cut for these stones is the square or trap cut, a cut usually associated with emeralds.