Rainbow Moon Stone & Larimar

Rainbow Moon Stone & Larimar hand cut and polished. Set in .925 Silver.

Necklace is 18"

Center stone is approximately 1.25" x .75"

Rainbow moonstone is a variety of labradorite. Rainbow moonstone deposits can be found in: Sri Lanka, Australia, Mexico, Madagascar, Poland, India, Canada (Labrador, China, Finland. Rainbow moonstone has a rich history and folklore that overlaps with moonstone in general. Ancient cultures, including the Romans, Greeks, and Hindus, believed moonstone was made from solidified moonbeams and associated it with the moon and feminine qualities.

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 Rilling 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.