Painite is one of the world's most rare collector gemstone ever discovered.
lit. R Webster (1994), Gems, their sources, descriptions and identification, page 356 quoted: " Painite is possibly the rarest of all gem minerals, only three crystals having been recovered from which at the time of writing no cut stone has been fashioned."
The gemstone was named after Mr.Pain who was a well-kown mineralogist and gemologist in Mogok (Burma, Myanmar).
The gemstone is so rare that they are individually numbered world-wide. Samples are currently only in the collection of the British Museum of Natural History (Crystals No.1 and No.2), London, and crystal No.3 is in the collection of the Gemological Institute of America. Crystal No.4 is now in two pieces; both are privately owned. One small sample slice from No. 1 is at Caltec University. Two more samples have been discovered now by Dr. A. Peretti. They are currently stored at GRS Gemresearch Swisslab, Lucerne (Switzerland) in the GRS gemstone collection, which includes also of the world's largest complete rough Kashmir crystal of over 160cts.

The faceted gem quality GRS-PAINITE specimen of over 2.5cts (World-PAINITE No.5) is the largest gem quality PAINITE existing in the world of excellent clarity, proportion and brilliancy.

The other crystal (0.15ct rough, World-PAINITE No.6) was found in Mogok and has been used to gain extensive scientific chemical and structural data.

Dr. A. Peretti filmed the original mining scenery of Ohn Gaing in 2002, where all Painite samples have been reported to come from.



The identification of the material included FTIR, RAMAN, LA-ICP-MS, electron microprobe analysis, as well as X-ray diffraction single crystal analyses, working in cooperation with 3 universities in Switzerland. In addition gemological tests included the use of Brewster Angle Refractometer, UV-VIS-NIR absorption spectroscopy and others. The chemical analyses and structural analyses are extensive and unique and include elements never measured before for PAINITE.

The full Painite Report will be published in the Spring Issue of the GRS Journal "Contributions to Gemmology" No.2, 2003 (see previous Journal No. 1).