Amethyst and purple

Amethyst and purple - what’s the difference? Amethyst has pink tones and is a rather light shade. Purple is a deeper colour with balanced blue and red tones. One of the main colorants was manganese. The list below goes from the lightest shades to the darkest.

Sun coloured purple – very pale, delicate purple base glass which is formed when manganese dioxide has been used as a decolourising agent in the glass batch to offset the residual iron impurities. When exposed to strong sunlight over a number of years, the trace amounts of manganese turn the glass light purple.

Lavender – a pale base colour, but the important ingredient here is the iridescence, which should be lavender in hue, although there are different schools of thought on this!

Amethyst – is a mid tone but the pink is very obvious in it. It can also be found with an opal edge

Purple – a deep, rich, balanced blue and red. A vivid iridescence on this can be called electric

Fiery amethyst – lots of crimson or ruby red tones – not a balanced blue+red, but more of the red. Some debate about this colour, see the Controversies section. For more on fiery amethyst, see Dugan-Diamond.

Oxblood – similar /darker version of fiery amethyst. See the Controversies section.

Black amethyst – when you hold it to the light you can just see a hint of purple. Some debate, again see the Controversies section.

Black – no purple can be seen when held to the light.