This was also believed by the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder. He believed quartz to be water ice, permanently frozen after great lengths of time. He supported this idea by saying that quartz is found near glaciers in the Alps, but not on volcanic mountains and that large quartz crystals were fashioned into spheres to cool the hands. This idea persisted until at least the 17th century.

Color

This standard refers to two different types of quartz:

Milky Quartz:

Milk quartz or milky quartz is the most common variety of crystalline quartz. The white color is caused by minute fluid inclusions of gas, liquid, or both, trapped during crystal formation. While on itself it is little appreciated as a gemstone, milky quartz combines very well with more colorful stones.

Clear Quartz (Rock Quartz):

Pure quartz, traditionally called rock crystal or clear quartz, is colorless and transparent or translucent and has often been used for hardstone carvings and jewelry.

Polishable

Quartz can be polished to a glass finish. Since antiquity, varieties of quartz have been the most commonly used minerals in the making of jewelry and hardstone carvings, especially in Europe and Asia.

Cutting Quality

Advantages:

Quartz does not tend to break or chip. Experienced cutters therefore can obtain very sharp unchipped edges between the backside and bezel as well as between the bezel and dome.

Top-cutting-quality is characterized by:

• a polished backside
• a sharp unchipped edge between the backside and the bezel
• a very straight and even highly polished bezel
• a sharp unchipped edge between the bezel and the dome
• a well-shaped dome, not showing any deformation
• Top-quality polish

Pricing

Adequate pricing must take into account the cost factors to obtain top-quality cabochons:

• The very hard quartz requires more labor, more experience to eliminate scratches and the process involves increase usage of tools, all this increasing the cost.
• Acquisition of top-grade Quartz.
• A usual material loss of approximately 90 % of the selected material during the cutting and shaping process.
• The level of experience required by a cutter to produce a flawlessly shaped and highly polished cabochon from such a hard material.

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