Once upon a time I took apart and sorted some strands of old quartz beads from Mali, and found a couple pieces with a similar creamy pink layer combined with a more carnelian layer - such as displayed around the tiny patches of druse (tiny crystals) and fortification agate in your picture.
The yummy pink coloring is possibly from microscopic hematite?
It's such a nicely shaped and polished bead, I don't think it came from Africa, however.
There's a porcelain-like pink jasper as well - Imperial Jasper, I think is it's trade name - but I don't recall seeing those little carnelian and druse patches in it. It's more like pink Bruneau Jasper.
At any rate, some kinda quartz...
I think you hit it on the head with jasper. Now that you mentioned jasper I remembered some red jasper I had that had small areas of light, peachy pink just like this. Excellent eye, thank you so much!
And yes, it's a very well worn and shaped bead, I love it and have been rubbing it and thinking how many other hands have rubbed it for who knows how long to get that nice glass-like finish. :)
There is a shell type that has a similar color, and is used for beads. Should weigh a bit less than stone....
Hi Floor! It's not shell, though I know exactly what you mean about the color. I recently bought myself a fun new toy, an electronic gem tester! So now of course I'm running all over the house testing everything that I can find that might be gemstone (and have found some nice surprises!) This bead registers in the area of chrysoprase or quartz. Probably an agate of some type, but the color is very different from any agate I've handled so I'm stumped and thought maybe someone would recognize it. It came in a bunch of ancient-20th century beads that I've been rummaging through. Thanks for taking the time to reply! -Melissa
