'Fruit Quartz' is the general trade term for a group of colorful, translucent materials which are individually known by fruit-like
names such as "cherry quartz", "blueberry quartz", "strawberry quartz",
"kiwi quartz", "pineapple quartz", and so on. They are commonly carved
into jewelry components such as beads or pendants or into decorative objects.
Despite the quartz part of their name, they are not natural stone despite sometimes being
mistaken or miscalled as such. Instead, they are synthetic materials
that are essentially a form of glass.
An oddity of these synthetic fruit "quartzes" is that when closely
examined, their colors are concentrated in the form of translucent or
opaque inclusions within a transparent colorless matrix. Like goldstone,
their production method precludes directly casting the material into
small, detailed shapes, which instead must be created by physically
carving them from larger rough blocks.
Although similar-looking (and similarly named) varieties of natural
quartz do exist, they are comparatively very rare and expensive. The
bright color of genuine strawberry quartz is accentuated by small
seedlike inclusions of lepidocrocite and hematite. Genuine pineapple quartz comes from Antsirabe, Madagascar, and is a form of citrine with an unusual growth pattern of crystals around its sides similar to pineapple fruit. Blue quartz has inclusions of ilmenite.
