Characteristic and Identification of Crystal with Artificial Tubular "Hair" Inclusion

A new kind of hair crystal with artificial hair inclusion and natural fluid inclusions appeared in the domestic jewelry marke recently, which has a much alike appearance to the natural hair crystal. The gemmological, FTIR and XRF techniques were used to test the crystal sample with artificial hair inclusion. The results showed that natural fluid inclusions and artificial tubular inclusions were both found in the host crystal. The man-made features include high parallelism and stiff look of the tubular inclusions, sharp or jagged tube shape, spiral patterned tube surface, filling of orange powder, resin on the near surface with incomplete filling, filling powder liquation and ultraviolet fluorescence of the infilling matters. FTIR and XRF results showed that the host crystal is rock crystal and the filling is a mixture of pigment and ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer (EVA). In conclusion, the imitators took natural rock crystal as the host crystal, and then used artificial hair as inclusions to imitate hair crystals. This new type of hair crystal imitation with artificial hair is similar to natural hair crystal. It is suggested that the identification of crystal with hair inclusions should not only include determination of the host crystal, but also the hair-like inclusions.