In the 1950s, British gemologist Arthur C.D. Pain was wandering around Myanmar’s gem-rich Mogok region, the kind of place where the ground occasionally sparkles just to Mogok, I mean, mock you, when he stumbled on a brownish-red crystal that didn’t match anything in the books. It took scientists several years to confirm it as a new species, and in 1957 it was officially named painite, because the universe apparently enjoys wordplay too. For nearly fifty years, only two crystals were known to exist. That’s right, two. By 2001, the count had crawled up to a few dozen. Then, like every good plot twist, Myanmar surprised everyone: miners in the early 2000s discovered new deposits, sending gemologists into an existential crisis. After half a century of heartbreak, painite wasn’t quite the rarest anymore, just emotionally expensive.
Painite’s (CaZrAl₉O₁₅(BO₃)) is a borate mineral containing calcium, zirconium, and aluminum, and at around 8 on the Mohs hardness scale, painite is harder than most gemstones, which means it would be perfect for jewelry if it wasn’t so unattractive. It’s optically complex, refractory, and perfectly capable of resisting even the most aggressive polishing, meaning that gem-quality stones are exceptionally rare.
In fact, before 2005, when the first decent-sized deposits were uncovered, gem-quality painite fetched up to $60,000 per carat, about the cost of an Audi R8, and arguably less fun. The value has since dropped as more material entered the market, but even now, a faceted painite can cost enough to make you cry a little.
The type locality, Ongaing near Mogok, sits in one of Earth’s most mineralogically blessed, and also, apparently cursed, regions. Mogok is where rubies, spinels, and sapphires grow up together in a metamorphic free-for-all. Finding painite there is like discovering a perfectly preserved espresso bean in a volcano. The crystals are typically dark reddish-brown to almost black, their luster hovering somewhere between “polished mahogany” and “burnt umber existential dread.” Under cross-polarized light, they show internal zoning patterns that make thin-section lovers sigh audibly. And to make this ugly geological wonder even more fascinating, geologists still don’t fully agree on how painite forms. The mineral seems to crystallize in boron-rich fluids infiltrating metamorphic host rocks rich in zirconium and aluminum, a fairly unlikely combination, with theories also revolving around late-stage hydrothermal processes that squeeze boron into high-temperature environments.
Even with new discoveries, painite remains astonishingly rare, only a few hundred well-crystallized specimens exist worldwide, and most are underwhelming fragments which unfortunately, look like poop (fig. 1).