Crystal Quartz, Clear, Natural, Drop, One Pendant, 30x18mm

Crystal Quartz, Clear, Natural, Drop, One Pendant, 30x18mm with Metal Alloy Bail 

Crystal Quartz, also called rock crystal or clear quartz, is a colorless and transparent or translucent.  It can be icy clear or have inclusions, veils, bubbles and various colors. World's largest quartz crystal cluster on display is in Namibia.  It was discovered in 1985 in a deep cave and is 9’ x 9’ and weighs 141 metric tons and took three years to excavate and remove.

Rock crystal quartz is found world wide, some of the major finds are in the the Alps, Brazil, Madagascar, and Japan. The best quartz crystals from the United States are found in Arkansas, and New York.

Quartz is Arkansas state mineral.

Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silicon and oxygen atoms. Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in Earth's continental crust, behind feldspar.  Pliny wrote nearly 2000 years ago that quartz crystals formed from ice exposed to intense cold for long periods of time in dark clefts and caverns in the mountains, like fossilized ice.  This general belief was popular in diverse cultures until the eighteenth century, when modern geology began to develop in Europe. The word quartz crystal comes from the Greek word "krystallos," which means ice.  Quartz is extracted from open pit mines usually using bulldozers and backhoes to expose the quartz crystal veins in the rocks.  Miners only use explosives on rare occasions when they need to expose a deep seam of quartz. 

Hardness 7

These pendants were made in China. 

Metal Alloy is a metal made by combining two or more metallic elements, base metals, to give greater strength or resistance to corrosion. In mining and economics, base metals refer to industrial non-ferrous metals excluding precious metals, like silver, gold, and platinum. Base Metals include copper, aluminum, nickel, tin, zinc antimony, bismuth, lead and many more. Metal Alloy, also known as Pewter and is usually a tin based alloy 85-95% of the time but could also be zinc based.

In December of 1994, The US Safe Drinking Water Act defined Lead-free as having less than 0.25% lead content. Most newly made solid pewter on the market today is considered lead free by these standards. But it is still recommended to not give children Metal Alloy jewelry if there is any chance, they will put it in their mouths!