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  Agate Necklaces, Earrings & Gemstone Bead Bracelets

  Agate necklaces and earrings with agate bracelets including cherry blossom agate pendant necklaces matching quartz crystal bead in peach and white colours.

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  YAN Blue Bead Bracelet Aquamarine & Quartz Long Bracelet Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

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  YAN Blue Pendant Necklace Aquamarine & Quartz Long Necklace Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

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  YAN Pink Blue Necklace Aquamarine & Quartz Long Necklace Style

  Maiden's Heart - Aquamarine - Blue

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  YAN Blue Pink Bracelet Aquamarine & Quartz Small Bracelet Style

  Maiden's Heart - Aquamarine - Blue

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  YAN Blue Necklace Aquamarine & Pearl Small Necklace Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

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  YAN Green Blue Bracelet Aquamarine & Strawberry Quartz Small Bracelet Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

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  YAN Silver Earrings Aquamarine & S925 Silver Flower Dangle Earrings Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

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  New Agate Gemstone Fashion

  Agate gemstone famous for colourful bands of colour in necklaces and bracelets, read more about this gemstone’s formation and history in our blog

  < YAN Gemstone Jewellery

  

  

  YAN Blue Bead Bracelet Aquamarine & Quartz Long Bracelet Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

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  YAN Blue Pendant Necklace Aquamarine & Quartz Long Necklace Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

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  YAN Pink Blue Necklace Aquamarine & Quartz Long Necklace Style

  Maiden's Heart - Aquamarine - Blue

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  YAN Blue Pink Bracelet Aquamarine & Quartz Small Bracelet Style

  Maiden's Heart - Aquamarine - Blue

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  YAN Blue Necklace Aquamarine & Pearl Small Necklace Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

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  YAN Green Blue Bracelet Aquamarine & Strawberry Quartz Small Bracelet Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

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  YAN Silver Earrings Aquamarine & S925 Silver Flower Dangle Earrings Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

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  Quartz Jewelry Beautiful Family

  Quartz is a diverse gemstone family with many members that add distinctive colour and recognisable traits to fashionable quartz jewelry necklaces and bracelets

  < YAN Gemstone Jewellery

  

  

  YAN Blue Bead Bracelet Aquamarine & Quartz Long Bracelet Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

  ￡ TBA 🛍

  

  

  YAN Blue Pendant Necklace Aquamarine & Quartz Long Necklace Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

  ￡ TBA 🛍

  

  

  YAN Pink Blue Necklace Aquamarine & Quartz Long Necklace Style

  Maiden's Heart - Aquamarine - Blue

  ￡ TBA 🛍

  

  

  YAN Blue Pink Bracelet Aquamarine & Quartz Small Bracelet Style

  Maiden's Heart - Aquamarine - Blue

  ￡ TBA 🛍

  

  

  YAN Blue Necklace Aquamarine & Pearl Small Necklace Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

  ￡ TBA 🛍

  

  

  YAN Green Blue Bracelet Aquamarine & Strawberry Quartz Small Bracelet Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

  ￡ TBA 🛍

  

  

  YAN Silver Earrings Aquamarine & S925 Silver Flower Dangle Earrings Style

  Ocean - Aquamarine - Blue

  ￡ TBA 🛍

Agate Necklaces, Earrings & Gemstone Bead Bracelets

These selected designs feature a variety of agates with natural patterning from scenic agate landscapes to cherry blossom agate floral buds that give visual depth to bead jewelry

< YAN Jewellery

YAN Crystal Bead Bracelet Moonstone & Chalcedony Long Bracelet Style

Ocean - Moonstone - Silver

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YAN Crystal Bead Necklace Moonstone & Rutilated Quartz Short Necklace Style

Elegance - Moonstone - Crystal

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YAN Crystal Pendant Necklace Moonstone & Chalcedony Long Necklace Style

Ocean - Moonstone - Silver

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YAN Green Bead Bracelet Moonstone & Turquoise Long Bracelet Style

Little Creatures - Moonstone - Silver

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YAN Purple Crystal Bracelet Moonstone & Rutilated Quartz Small Bracelet Style

Elegance - Moonstone - Silver

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YAN White Bracelet Moonstone & Red Amber Long Bracelet Style

Snow Princess - Moonstone - White

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YAN White Pendant Necklace Moonstone & Agate Long Necklace Style

Snow Princess - Moonstone - White

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YAN Pink White Bracelet Rutilated Quartz Small Bracelet Style

Snow Princess - Moonstone - White

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YAN Silver Bead Necklace Moonstone & Agate Long Necklace Style

Night Ocean - Moonstone - Silver

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YAN Silver Bead Bracelet Moonstone & Agate Long Bracelet Style

Night Ocean - Moonstone - Silver

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YAN Silver Earrings Moonstone & S925 Silver Dangle Earrings Style

Night Ocean - Moonstone - Silver

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YAN Silver Bead Necklace Moonstone & Obsidian Long Necklace Style

Gothic - Moonstone - Silver

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YAN Black Bead Bracelet Moonstone & Obsidian Small Bracelet Style

Gothic - Moonstone - Silver

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Agate varying in beautiful bands of colour with layers of chalcedony and quartz crystals sublimely folding together, presenting swirling ranges of natural rainbow colours.

Agate has been a traditional gemstone for the making of colourful beads, cabochons and carvings since it was discovered alongside a river shoreline in ancient Greece by philosopher Theophrastus over two thousand years ago.

With names including “cherry blossom agate”, “scenic agate” and “crazy lace agate”, the family of agate gemstone types is both colourful and a fascinating look into a world of natural colour and variation.

Popularly used as an ornamental stone for it’s hardness and resilience to weathering, agate has been a canvas for artists that have carved such wonders as the Roman “Holy Grail of Valencia“, and the Byzantine “Rubens Vase”, acting as relief to beautiful carvery with no indication of great age.

In the modern world agates are fabulous presentations of colour that are used widely in cabochon jewelry such as pendant necklaces and bracelets, and takes centre stage in our selection of designer jewellery with confident new modern life design.

Formation of Agate Gemstones

A cryptocrystalline gemstone, agate is comprised of multitudes of tiny micro crystals of quartz and chalcedony, with small changes in the environment of the growing agate forming differences in the bands of colour.

Much as tree growth is represented by lines in the section of a growing tree, agate forms layers as the minerals that it grows from deposit slowly over time into the bands it is so famous for.

When volcanic rocks are the parent rocks, agate forms when gases released by the heat of volcanic action escape and expand into molten hollows, forming cavities that will become the birthplaces of the subsequent agate.

Surrounded by volcanic minerals rich in silica minerals, water seeps into these cavities, coating the inside with an initial, often green tinged “priming layer”.

In the cosy birthing nodule the silica rich water then crystallises into chalcedony, coating the interior layer in a ring of new material that continues to grow so long as the mineral rich fluid provides for.

Over time the environment of this crystalline nodule slowly changes, and with the change in the environment the deposition of the agate bands change in colour, depth and constitution, ever so slowly growing towards the centre in changing bands that will forever reflect this passage of time.

No matter how these changes occur, perhaps a change in flow, a make up of the mineral rich fluid or otherwise a change in the environment around the nodule, the changes are unique to the agate’s birth and identifiable to the place where the agate comes from.

Myriad Presentations of Agate

The result of this gradual formation presents as beautiful bands of shining colour, a blend of quartz and chalcedony shifting between light and dark layers, sometimes finished with stunning arrays of quartz crystals filling the centre of a volcanic geode.

Not just limited to volcanic rock, under the right conditions “cold water” agates can be found forming from silica rich fluids in pockets of marine limestone, producing muted layers of white and grey colouring.

Given the right environment agate gemstones can also be found growing into stalactites in caverns deep under ground, into the voided husks of fossilized coral – slowly taking the internal shape of the coral, or into the shells of fossilized “Turritella” – ancient marine gastropods.

Hardier than the ancient rock cocoon it comes from agate will often separate and later found in “agate nodules”, these are found with a rough outer surface and a shape taken from the environment which it grew from.

When taken in cross section the beautiful bands of chalcedony and quartz present as lines of colours starting from an initial prime layer and then proceeding inward in a succession of bands.

These agate bands vary considerably in colouring and shape across the family of gemstone types.

Though many agate gemstones are found to be light to dull grey in colouration and subsequently dyed with colours, many ranges of colour across the visual spectrum are found in nature.

The Family of Agate

Though agate is comprised of chalcedony, chalcedony itself is not considered agate unless it shows banding, though there are some exceptions where the bands present as fern and landscape type patterns.

With the majority of agate gemstones found in Brazil these “Brazilian agates” have ranges of colours that are finely separated into even layers of banding, which have historically been dyed to enhance their predominately white and grey colour.

Less common “cherry blossom agate’ is a form of agate gemstone that presents soft translucent peach tones and is famous for inclusions of milky flower like “cherry blossoms”.

Dendritic agate and scenic agates show subtle ranges of colour with fern like and landscape like impressions respectively, found in Brazil these agate families form in similar ways to traditional agates.

Moss agate of India is often shown in small plates of material to better show translucency, this agate is green to brown in colour, with moss like inclusions that show micro landscapes of nature.

Discovered only in Central American regions “fire agate” is named for a fire effect of iridescent light similar to mother of pearl colouring and gifted with red colours and vibrant dynamic reflections.

There are many many varieties of agate gemstone with each showing different features in the structure of bands which are uniquely coloured and make for beautiful inclusions into jewellery matchable to many different fashion styles and personalities.

Agate Gemstone Finds

As nodules that have become separated from parent rock agates are found to size from less than a centimetre to almost a metre in circumference.

Nodules of agate are often opened to reveal crystals inside them, these are called druse’s, quartz, amethyst and many other crystals can be found within.

Where the nodule is completely filled with agate it is referred to as a geode.

Once found in the German town of Idar-Oberstein agate was extensively used in the gemstone trade and lauded for size and natural ranges of colours.

Over many centuries of activity agate was subsequently mined out, and in the 19th century many local people seeking escape from poverty found their way to South America.

In Brazilian Rio Grande do Sol these emigrants found what was to later be the most important economic sources of agate ever discovered, a massive commercial source of regular even striations, readily accepting dye that increased the value of the stone.

Shipped back as ships ballast to their town in Germany, this foreign source of agate renewed the old town and turned it into a gemstone hub that sent colourful patterned gemstones to jewellery makers across the world.

Though later finds in Indian and Thailand have opened up the global market for agates the original gemstone hub of Europe has retained fame for accumulated experience, and continued it’s heritage as a centre of agate excellence.

Cultural History of Agate

In nature agate shows good weathering characteristics that stem from it’s higher hardness of over 6 on the mohs scale, and can be readily polished to a smooth finish when worked with polishing wheels or rubbed against sandstone.

Agate has been widely shaped into much more than beads and cabochons for jewellery.

In headstone carving many cultures have turned to this precious gemstone as it holds detail very well, with pendant charms impressed with portraits, vases with decorative detail and shaped handles for knives and forks.

Dating from the kingdoms of ancient Egypt agate gemstone was used as a decorative gemstone, while ancient Minoan culture and Byzantine cultures of the Mediterranean used agate in drinking vessels and decorative jewelry.

With the development of industrial gemstone production in Europe, agate was shaped by water and later steam driven sandstones in workshops that created ranges of colourful beads used in art and craft uses across the early world and today.

Much agate found today is dyed in colour, though dyed agate is not recognisable by eye typical natural colours are much softer in presentation across bands, with light transitions of a single colour range as opposed to contrasting stripes.

As our jewellery makes use of natural gemstones all of our agate is sourced from suppliers that do not dye agate.

YAN Fashion use of Agate

Used extensively in YAN fashion jewelry, agate pendants and beads are chosen for their natural beauty that stems from rich floral imagery and soft projection of colour and light.

Suited well to our designer’s love of art and flower, cherry blossom agate shows clear blooms of flowers captured in small landscape scenes that are unique to each and every piece.

Cherry blossom agate is often peach pink in colour and matches well to both light white moonstone and quartz crystal designs that project purity, and our wood bead series of necklaces and bracelets that with accompanying floral silver brocades complement the floral nature of this type of agate very well.

Many of our bracelet designs are supported by agate beads which as complement to larger pendants help to blend agate together combinations of gemstone colours.

Of slightly different character is our new design range of litchy jelly agate necklaces that feature a translucent form of agate with pure elegant presentation and simple transparent tone in novel styling, this necklace can be seen here.

Classic agate types are seen in our ocean concept collection where a pendant necklace’s bands of subtle colouring are an element in the peaceful feeling of this series.

Agate’s of other types include scenic agate, natural landscapes are as if painted in the traditional fashion, casting visages of leaves and natural forms against white canvas.

Our designer’s studios efforts to bring out the natural beauty of gemstones in concert with each other to achieve a clearly evident design has made full use of agate with it’s floral character and natural beauty.

Our ranges of agate necklaces and bracelets can be seen in our store here, many of our designs feature agate beads and pendants with individual products detailing further details and interesting reads.

YAN fashion design shows that uncoloured agate are is just as rich and lively in colour as any gemstone, and our new designs that blend gemstones beautifully together to form new modern inspired styles are a continuation of the world’s love of this precious stone.

Notably more weathering resistant than surrounding parent rock, the passing of time served to expose this beautiful crystal to early cultures when clearly juxtaposing itself in natural seams exposed against surrounding layered rock, and gave immediate spiritual and material benefits to those societies who discovered it.

Slighter hardier than steel on the Mohr scale quartz was highly valued in ancient culture as hand knapped axes with it’s prized use in this lithic stone technology being one of the longest continuous uses of technology to date.

A crystal that projects clean purity when compared to the rock in which it is often discovered many historical spiritual benefits are to be found recorded hand in hand.

The bible records the gemstone family member amethyst as conferring spiritual protection adorned to the breast plates of high priests, while Christian knights carried crystals of quartz for healing powers, and great thinkers such as Leonardo Da Vinci referred to it as bestowing keenness of thought.

Used extensively by the Celtic people of ancient Western Europe from the Alps to Ireland and Scotland – where large natural deposits are found – quartz was fashioned into myriad crystal figurines which are still to be found in these peoples ancient crypts, and was used in contemporary bead necklaces and bracelets which were traded widely.

Decorating headdresses and crowns larger quartz crystals were used by Egyptian royalty to emphasise social status, while shaman tribal soothsayers gained insights into the spiritual planes from early natural crystals, which were later machined into crystal balls that proved popular for divining in the early twentieth century.

Our own quartz jewelry design uses many quartz crystal family members for their contributions to rich and interesting design, which with varied colouring, myriad lustres of sparkling light and deep inclusions of precious minerals make a fantastic art palette for a modern fashion designer.

Quartz as a mineral is found widely in nature and is an important element of constitution for many rocks such as granite, while after being weathered down though the passing of ages it is found widely distributed as sand particles on beaches around the world.

Quartz is often quarried from deep rock veins, where layers between sedimentary rocks have allowed spaces for the crystals to slowly grow into, and provide for rich sources of surrounding mineral to crystallise and grow from.

Sometimes smaller localised pockets of quartz crystals grow from minerals of other rocks deep below the ground which can be discovered filling large natural crystal clusters.

Natural crystal geodes are formed when hot lava traps gas bubbles which then form into cavities that allow minerals of surrounding material to gradually grow into.

Growing in subterranean high temperature silica rich environments the quartz minerals crystallizes into a variety of well known rock crystals such as citrine and amethyst.

Quartz crystals have two primary types of which the larger macro crystal type is found in many of our quartz jewelry collections and whose crystal structure can be discerned by eye.

This type includes the classic rock crystal white quartz, which as a close to transparent crystal reflects ample light and contrasts well against black and darker opaque hue design.

Ancient Egyptian necklaces and bracelets featured natural quartz crystals as centrepieces of designs that included supporting beads of golden ceramics and precious stones such as emerald.

Possessing greater design depth are the rutilated quartz varieties, these quartz crystals have grown together with rutile inclusions of other minerals and metals that grow naturally within the crystal.

In rutilated quartzes colourful metals such as copper or silver and minerals such as green chlorite are subsumed by a growing quartz crystal or slowly amalgamate together adding beautiful colouring and depth to designs which make use of them.

In our own designs rutile quartzes balance stronger colours in amethyst and other gemstones with the lighter crystals of quartz when used as supporting beads.

Rutile quartzes are an important part of our designer jewelry for their versatility which when balanced with stronger colours acts as a medium to project concepts that make use of many different gemstone types.

Well known quartz jewelry family member amethyst obtains her famous purple colour from the inclusion of scattered iron elements which in deep purple Siberian amethyst is famously prized.

Amethyst colours vary greatly across the world with deep purple to barely visible purple, scattered light and dark colouring and stable colours all being found.

Siberian amethyst as well as other varieties of this quartz family member can be read about in our blog article here.

Amethyst is widely found in Brazil and in many places grows in conjunction with the lighter coloured citrine, even so far as forming a twinned crystal that has traits of both parent crystals that is known as ametrine.

Yellow quartz is called citrine and shines with a range of bright yellow tones from golden citrine’s golden hues to Madeira citrine brown shades and yellow citrine’s lemon yellow colouring.

Quartz family members such as these examples cover many hundreds of other naturally formed crystals where the crystal form is readily apparent to the eye.

Where quartz crystals are not readily apparent to the eye they are termed cryptocrystalline quartz – so called as the crystals are cryptic, these quartz crystals include agate and chalcedony varieties which are used in many of our necklace designs.

Made up of millions of tiny crystals these gemstones posses some of the translucency and reflectivity of macro quartz crystals but with unique properties that come from their makeup, such as deeper colouring and fantastic scattering of reflected light.

Chalcedony is one of this type of quartz with it’s translucent milky colour coming from reflections of light from the tiny micro crystal quartzes.

Though not as transparent to light as macro crystal quartz, it’s hardness and resilience to cutting in common with other microcrystalline quartzes make for easier shaping of pendants and other pieces which are subsequently beautifully shaped.

Our own quartz jewelry includes peace, ring and heart pendants made of milky white chalcedony which impart purity to design and act to balance stronger opaque supporting bead colours while possessing some of the same reflective lightness that is found in other crystal quartzes.

The special type of chalcedony shown in the pendant necklace photo above is a petrified chalcedony.

Forming over many hundreds of millions of years tiny quartz crystals grow into and very slowly replace organic matter leaving visible vestiges of their original fragile forms.

The quartz jewelry piece above shows the forms of tiny marine plants which have left delicate light impressions in the chalcedony matrix, a memory from a warm aquatic world that covered the Earth in a time far removed from our present age.

Belonging to a special type of chalcedony these pieces have stronger natural connections being intimately connected to the living world.

In our quartz jewelry designs petrified chalcedony is often used in forest concepts which project feelings of woodland glades, or in aquatic ocean concepts with projections of aquatic nature and blue ocean tones.

An opaque variety of a micro crystalline quartz is the solid coloured jasper, a form of chalcedony that though lacking translucency shows more strong distinctive colours, though this gemstone is not found in our collections at time of writing.

Agate is a banded chalcedony that is much more translucent to light and can show striking colour bands and landscape impressions where chalcedony is typically comprised of more opaque white colouring.

One colourful and translucent agate variety is banded agate whose bands of colour, though sometimes less colourful than other gemstones, display as painted landscapes and in “moss” agate abound with natural fern like structures.

Our family of quartz jewelry uses the natural lightness and quartz crystal transmission of light as an aid to designs that add levity to natural gemstone and balance stronger natural colours into more balanced designs.

In the above picture an excellent example of cherry blossom agate shows some translucency while with beautiful natural patterning radiates purity while lifting the blue colouring of the supporting beads and adding a deftness of light to the necklace.

Quartz and it’s myriad family members have been friends of jewelry lovers and designers across millennia and enriches our own in house jewelry design in a unique way to our collected necklaces and bracelets.

YAN fashion quartz jewelry styles use quartz as both central and supporting aspects of design depending on the amount of colour and the intended use of the jewelry.

Our designer quartz jewelry is designed with a principal idea and the use of quartz crystals in the design act as an aid to projection of this central concept focus.

With so many types of quartz to choose from with differing colour and lustre of light quartz can be selected as both a central bead that acts as the focus, or as a lighter supporting bead to balance or help project an idea.

In quartz jewelry designs that use many different types of gemstone quartzes can balance harmoniously with crystals such as lighter green prehnite crystals or translucent white moonstone which allows selections of different semi precious stones to act together to carry forward a design concept.

Lighter quartz crystals such as white quartz are also used frequently in our black obsidian bead necklaces and bracelets where their natural light radiance serves to lift darker obsidian blacks.

Even in our gothic range of jewelry that is rich in beautiful black tone, the presence of crystal beads of quartz add a lightness to design and brings an unmistakable natural levity such as in the photo of a bracelet above.

In some of our designs both crypto and crystal quartzes are used together resulting in light radiant designs such as our pixie princess necklaces which are deft and nimble in tone.

I n the necklace above a pendant of agate with a high degree of translucency allows matching to lighter macro crystal phantom quartz beads whose faint vestiges of precursor crystals balance well with the detail in the pendant.

Natural necklaces such as rose woods and wing woods – though not gemstone in nature, can also balance with crypto crystalline agates and chalcedonies.

The following photo shows floral impressions from the cherry blossom agate match well to rose wood beads whose own surface projects natural energy further encouraged with bouquets of silver roses and floral agate supporting beads.

Quartz is to the crystal world as a flower is to the world of plants, at once ubiquitous and widespread in nature though both precious and beautiful no matter where it is found.

Incorporated into quartz jewelry design this crystal of every colour and variety lends itself to harmonising with almost every conceivable type of gemstone acting as a go between of light and dark tone and giver of levity to darker lustres.

As a central bead quartz – as it has done for hundreds of thousands of years, stands out with purity of natural energy projecting light from itself, while selflessly balancing with a range of different jewelry design.

The fantastic family of quartz crystals are an artists treasure trove of colour and light that imbue each piece of jewelry with beauty and selfless energy.

More designer quartz jewelry talked about in our article can be seen in our category of quartz necklaces and bracelets we hope you love our gemstone articles and check our fashion blog for more articles.