Iolite, Now There's a Mineral of a Different Color!

     I think that it’s safe to say that iolite could be the face of pleochroic minerals. Pleochroic minerals are minerals that exhibit different colors when viewed from different angles. Iolite appears to be violet-blue when viewed down the length of its crystals, but colorless when looked at from the side of its crystals. This amazing change of color makes iolite one of my favorite minerals. Unfortunately my piece doesn’t display this pleochroism. Perhaps the fact that it’s too compact to allow a lot of light to pass through it has something to do with that.
     Iolite is said to have orthorhombic crystals, but I’ve never seen a picture-perfect iolite crystal, so I can’t describe what it looks like except for the fact that it’s prismatic and has flat faces. Iolite is also found as compact masses. I have seen transparent and translucent iolite, but I’m not sure if it can be opaque. Iolite has a vitreous luster like quartz and shares quartz’s Mohs scale hardness of 7. Because it is dichroic (dichroic means that it is pleochroic with two different colors) iolite is also called dichroite. Iolite is also known by the names cordierite and ‘water sapphire.’ Iolite’s only commercial use outside of collecting is as a gemstone.
     You can find iolite in places like: India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Norway, Finland, Germany, and Wyoming.
     Iolite is one of my favorite minerals simply because it has some of the most remarkable pleochroism that I’ve ever seen. It’s a really cool mineral and I’m glad that God saw it fit for me to have a sample of it!