Every single month of the calendar year has a gemstone that corresponds to it and this is widely known as the birthstone for that particular month. It is considered lucky to wear the birthstone that corresponds to the month during which you were born. So what is the birthstone for January?

The modern birthstone for January is the garnet. Today garnets are most associated with vintage and antique jewellery and have a very distinctive deep red colour. Although red is the predominant colour of garnets they can also be found in a whole range of fancy colours, which allows them to adapt to the most popular type of jewellery trends. Garnet is the word used to describe over ten different gemstones all with a similar chemical structure. This means that garnets come in a
wide range of colours including green, yellow, orange and brown colours. Blue appears to be the only elusive colour where this stone is concerned. Garnets according to their different colours can also be identified by their different names, Andradite, Demantoid, Grossularite, Hessonite, Pyrope, Rhodolith, Tsavorith, Spessartine and Uwarowite.

The sun soaked colours that are reflected in garnets are reminiscent of an Indian Summer. Garnets are mined in countries such as Africa, India, Russia and South America. Even though the garnet is the modern birthstone for January, there are other birthstones that can also be attributed to this month. The zodiac birthstone is ruby, the Hebrew, Roman, Arabic, Polish and Russian birthstone is garnet, the talismanic stone is onyx and the Hindu stone is the little known serpent stone.