Bumble Bee Jasper & Larimar

Bumble Bee Jasper & Larimar hand cut and polished. Set in .925 Silver.

Necklace is 18"

Center stone is approximately 1" x 1".

Bumble bee jasper, also known as bumblebee stone, is a vibrantly colored stone that originated in Indonesia in the 1990s. It's mined from the side of Mount Papandayan volcano on the island of Java by Indoagate.com and is a mixture of volcanic lava, sediment, and various minerals. The stone is actually a type of travertine with a calcite base and is a member of the chalcedony family.

The history of larimar, a rare blue stone found in the Dominican Republic, began in 1916 when a priest wrote a letter to his archbishop mentioning the stone, but it wasn't mined at the time. In 1974, Miguel Méndez, a jewelry shop owner in Santo Domingo, and Peace Corps volunteer Norman Riling rediscovered larimar on a beach at the base of the Bahoruco Mountain Range. The two men noticed that the few stones they found were alluvial sediment, washed into the sea by the Bahoruco River, and traced the stone's source to a large rock formation deep within the volcanic mountain. Méndez named the stone after his daughter, Larissa, and the Spanish word mar, which means "sea", to suggest the colors of the Caribbean Sea.