Red agate has been cut in China for well over a thousand years, and the deep orange-red of the southern material — nanhong — is the colour people picture when they think of a red stone for a luck year. It is a form of chalcedony, banded in some pieces and almost uniform in others. This strand is 8 mm beads on elastic cord, the red sitting somewhere between brick and rust rather than a bright scarlet. Worn as jewellery and a tradition, not as a mechanism.
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Agate is chalcedony — cryptocrystalline quartz — and its colours come from traces of iron and other elements. The darkest, most saturated red material from southern China is traded as nanhong and commands a premium; beads that are more orange or more brown are the same mineral at a lower grade, and we price ours in the middle rather than pretending otherwise.
Some red agate on the market is dyed. Ours is not, which is why the colour is uneven across a strand: dyed beads tend to be uniformly, flatly red.
Red is the colour of celebration in Chinese custom — wedding paper, door couplets, the envelopes given at New Year. In a horse year the association is simply older and louder.
