silicates
Morganite
Be3Al2Si6O18
- Also known as
- pink berylrose beryl
- Crystal system
- hexagonal
- Hardness
- 7.5–8 on the Mohs scale
- Lustre
- vitreous
- Colour
- Pink to peach to salmon
- Where it forms
- In lithium-rich granite pegmatites, alongside tourmaline and kunzite.
- Chiefly from
- MadagascarBrazilAfghanistanCalifornia, United States
Why it is that colour
Manganese. Much commercial material is heated to remove a yellow component and shift the colour from salmon towards pink, which is the fashionable direction.
Safety
Safe to handle; beryllium dust from cutting is the hazard.
Where it comes from
Madagascar and Brazil supply most material. The 2010s surge in demand, driven by engagement-ring fashion, considerably raised prices for a stone that had been a collector’s curiosity.
Historical use
None to speak of before 1911.
Recorded as history and attributed where possible. That a stone was used for something establishes that people used it, not that it worked.
What is attributed to it, and since when
Named in 1911 by George Kunz, then Tiffany’s chief gemmologist, after the banker J. P. Morgan, who was his most important client and collector. It has no traditional history at all. Its current popularity dates from a marketing push around 2010 and its meanings are correspondingly recent.
Described, not endorsed. Dating a claim is not the same as assessing it — but an association that first appears in a book published in 1985 is not an ancient inheritance, whatever the label says. A sincere account of feeling better is compatible with the stone doing nothing — see the placebo effect.
Worth knowing
Morganite is a documented case of a gemstone being named, marketed and given a meaning within living memory. It was christened in 1911 by a Tiffany gemmologist in honour of a client. It sat quietly for a century. Around 2010 it became fashionable for engagement rings, prices rose sharply, and a full complement of metaphysical properties duly appeared alongside the demand.
Nothing about the mineral changed at any point in that sequence.
Identity checked against IMA-CNMNC master list, June 2025.