A micro-druse
A crust of quartz crystals well under a millimetre across, grown after the amethyst beneath it.
Artigas · Uruguay
We find the piece.
You decide.
Sugar Amethyst sources exceptional amethyst in northern Uruguay — the rare sugar druse that scatters light like frost. We search the quarries, the cutters and the established houses, with your brief in hand.
How it works
Four steps, and a conversation
It starts with a conversation: you tell us what you are after, and someone who is already there goes looking for it.
- 01
Tell us what you collect
Type of piece, size, budget per piece, where it goes. Two minutes on WhatsApp and we have your profile ready.
- 02
We search in origin
Quarries in Artigas, cutters, and established houses. We go in person, with your brief in mind.
- 03
You see it first, in private
Video from every angle, sent directly to you. As many as you need, before anyone else sees it.
- 04
We prepare and ship
Packed for the distance, export documents prepared, tracked to your door.
Our approach
We buy it after you choose it
Every search begins with a brief and ends with a single piece: the one you chose.
Because we acquire it only after finding what you are looking for, we never gather material for the sake of gathering it. That leaves us free to search by one criterion alone — yours — and to search wherever an exceptional piece might appear.
Fine material is born in the quarries, passes through the hands of specialist cutters, and reaches us too from established houses, where years of accumulated experience yield exceptional pieces.
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Your brief comes first
The search starts from what you are looking for, and stays there until it is found.
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Across all of Artigas
Quarries, cutters and established houses alike. We are glad to work with each of them.
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One piece at a time
We look for the piece that suits you, and we stop when we have found it.
The phenomenon
Why it is called sugar
Over the amethyst, a second generation of microscopic quartz crystals grows into a fine druse. Under light it does not reflect — it scatters, the way a dusting of sugar does. It forms only under narrow conditions, and it cannot be produced, improved or imitated. A piece either has it or it does not.
Scattered light
Light breaks across thousands of tiny faces instead of bouncing off one. That is the frost.
Narrow conditions
Sugar forms in a small part of the flows. Most geodes never develop it at all.
Provenance
Artigas,
northern Uruguay
One hundred and thirty million years ago basalt flooded this corner of South America. Gas trapped in the cooling rock left cavities behind; water and silica spent the rest of that time filling them. What comes out of them is the reference against which amethyst everywhere else is measured.
We work here, on the ground, in person. That is not a detail of the story — it is the reason we can find what we find.
- years in the making
- 130M years in the making
- sourced in Artigas
- 100% sourced in Artigas
- every piece
- 1 of 1 every piece
The amethyst deposits of the Los Catalanes district, in Artigas, were designated an IUGS Geological Heritage Site in 2022 — among the first hundred in the world, and the first in Uruguay.
Amethyst is the national stone of Uruguay.
See the official IUGS entryResponsible extraction
How it comes out of the ground
Uruguay regulates its mineral sector, and Artigas has lived from these stones for decades. That matters if you care where what you own came from.
Licensed and supervised
Extraction in Artigas is licensed and overseen by DINAMIGE, the national mining authority, under social and environmental responsibility guidelines. Every shipment leaves with its export documentation.
A regional livelihood
Around two thousand people work in extraction and processing in Artigas. What you buy supports a region that has lived from this for decades, not an anonymous chain.
Authentic and verifiable
Geodes are taken mechanically from the basalt, and the sugar forms on its own inside the rock — what you see on a piece is the work of time. Every piece arrives with its origin identified: we know where it came from because we were there.
Private access
The pieces that never reach this page
Exceptional finds move fast and quietly. They go to Close Friends on Instagram, or straight to the collectors whose brief they match. Tell us what you look for and you will see them before they are public — or before the wider public ever knows they exist, when we go looking on your behalf.
Build your collector profile
Type of piece, size range, budget, destination, and whether it is for your collection or for resale. We match every find against it.
Start on WhatsAppLooking for something specific?
Send a reference photo and a short brief. We take it to the quarries and the cutters, and come back with options.
Send your briefDelivery
Getting it to you
Packed for the distance
Crated and braced. Amethyst travels badly when it is treated as freight, so we do not treat it as freight.
Export handled
Uruguayan export documentation prepared and included with every shipment.
Tracked worldwide
Courier with tracking to your door. You get the number the day it leaves.
Seen before it ships
We photograph the piece packed and sealed, so you know exactly what left here.
For resellers
Buying to sell again?
A good part of what we source goes to galleries, shops and dealers. We keep prices as ranges in public for a reason: your margin is not ours to publish. Tell us your volume and your market, and we will quote you properly, in private.
Tell us what you are looking for
One message is enough to start. We answer on WhatsApp, usually the same day.
Message us on WhatsApp