From owner-rockhounds-digest@drizzle.com Sat Jan 26 16:20:59 2002 Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 23:16:01 -0800 From: rockhounds-digest Reply-To: rockhounds@drizzle.com To: rockhounds-digest@drizzle.com Subject: rockhounds-digest V2 #1160 rockhounds-digest Wednesday, January 23 2002 Volume 02 : Number 1160 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 23:13:04 -0700 From: "Peter J. Modreski" Subject: Re: "Druzy" I can't resist sharing a few comments re. the messages exchanged over the last few days about "druzy". I've been curious to see the way the use of this term has developed in the past few years. People are using the word in a way that has gone a bit beyond its traditional (should I say, "real"?) meaning. To most of us "rockhounds" (and mineralogists), drusy (the word is spelled with an "s") is an adjective that refers to a mineral specimen that is coated with a layer of small crystals, or small projecting points which are the terminations of crystals. The most common usage is for drusy quartz, and the drusy layers usually form as the lining of a cavity. The noun to describe such a crystal coating is a "druse". However in recent years, lapidary people have been talking about and marketing "druzy" (they use the word as a noun, and often spell it with a "z" (heaven knows how that got started). It seems to be used for any reasonably hard (quartz or other) stone that is occurs as a drusy coating, and is suitable for being cut into an oval, rectangular, or other shape, often polished around the edges, and used in jewelry as you would a cabochon. If you look on the internet, you'll see lots of ads for druzy quartz, black druzy, druzy chyrsocolla, druzy agate, and just plain "druzy". One reads things like "most black druzy is dyed (except for hematite and psilomelane)". When people use this term, there's a presumption that the drusy coating is fine-textured enough so as to look pretty and sparkly when mounted as the size of a piece you'd wear in jewelry--in other words, the crystal points are small enough to just appear as tiny sparkles. Jewelry makers that cater to New Age types seem to be especially fond of "druzy". I remember part of my introduction to the word came one recent year, driving into Tucson on I-10, and seeing a big banner across a hotel proclaiming "D R U Z Y". As you may gather from what I've written, it sort of makes me wince when I see this, because it's a misuse (not a gross misuse, admittedly, just a sort of mild misuse) of a mineral term, and of course, with the its own creative spelling. When I just searched for "drusy + gem" on Google, I got about 600 hits spelling it "drusy", but about 1500 hits using "druzy". I think this is the reason that among the responses to these postings, some people were describing their "regular old drusy quartz", such as the abundant drusy quartz from Missouri, but this was probably not quite what the people had in mind who are looking for the typical "druzy" being used in jewelry. Probably most of you on this list already know everything I've said here! And I don't mean to offend anyone--hey, whatever kind of pretty rocks turn you on, is fine with me. And it's a free country, I guess they can spell it any way they want to! Pete Modreski, Denver CO ------------------------------ End of rockhounds-digest V2 #1160 ********************************* ################################################################# # Rockhounds@drizzle Mailing Alias: rockhounds@drizzle.com # # Web: http://www.drizzle.com/~afox/rockhounds/ # # Subscription Services: majordomo@drizzle.com # #################################################################