SO SOCAL: The Best...The Beautiful...And The Bizarre : IN THE PINK : Stone Age Stone Wear

Strung together with silver and pearls, tourmaline’s bright baby-finger shade of pink looks particularly beautiful under the Southern California sun. But understand that one of our region’s few indigenous semiprecious stones is formed in a hell of searing heat, pressure and violence.

Ninety to 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs’ screeches and grunts reverberated, the wooded, hilly Pala region of San Diego County was buried in the nightmarishly hot granitic roots of ancient volcanoes.

Fluids and complex gases, several times the temperature of a boiling cup of coffee, shot up into cracks in the Pala granites, carrying sodium, calcium, potassium, magnesium, aluminum, iron, manganese, vanadium and chromium. Many of these tourmalines are harder than quartz and slightly magnetic, if heated. Some are as thick as a beer can, others as thin as a needle. Unlike diamonds, emeralds or rubies, the tourmalines’ complex crystal chemistry makes them impossible to approximate synthetically.

Through 1912, at the end of the Manchu dynasty, the Pala tourmalines were among the mostly highly prized stones in China. In fact, some current Japanese enthusiasts wipe the stonecutter’s powder on their hands like talc, believing the tourmaline will absorb body heat, reduce fatigue and improve circulation.