Once upon a time in Russia… Some dudes found a rock and named it after the crown prince since it was his birthday.
The end.
No wait, I mean: The Beginning.
One day in the Summer of 1830 Finnish mineralogist Nils Gustaf Nordenskiöld (1792–1866) was sitting in his office at the Mining Board in Helsingfors when he received a parcel to examine. Nils was pretty much the most renowned mineralogist of his day so shiny hunks of dirt got sent to him all the time. No biggie.
Upon opening the contents of the parcel Nils said, “Green, transparent, shiny… Emerald” (or more accurately: “vihreä, tranparant, kiiltävä … smaragdi“), and almost didn’t conduct any further tests; but something just wasn’t sitting right with him. He began to poke, scratch, smash, and do all the things a good mineralogist does with Earthly byproducts, and he couldn’t get over the fact that the stone was just too hard and not brittle enough to be an emerald. Weird.
After fussing with it for a while Nils lost the sunlight so he grabbed some dinner and pondered this strange stone while he pushed peas around his plate. Being a good scientist he abandoned his meal and returned to the lab to inspect the stone under candlelight. “Mitä vittua?!” Nils half exclaimed/half asked. The stone, which a few hours earlier had been deep green, was now a rich red! The next morning the stone was no longer red and had returned to its former deep green! “Voi Luoja!”
This was no emerald.
The package with the strange stone had come from Count Lev Aleksevich von Perovski (1792-1856) who at the time was trying to climb the social ladder as the royal mineralogist for Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. Perovski had also identified the stone as an emerald, but the problem was that he kind of sucked at his job, so he sent a specimen to Nils to double check his “work”.
Earlier that Summer Perovski’s team had been poking around in the Izumrudnye Kopi (Emerald mines) in the Ural Mountains (you remember the Urals, that is where Demantoid Garnets were discovered as told via the previous Rare Gem Series post: http://noospheregeologic.com/blog/2012/10/11/the-rare-gem-series-demantoid-garnet/) when they discovered the stones in an alluvial deposit (think gravel river bed) along the Tokovaya River. By 1831 Perovski had opened his new “emerald” mine and was in full whipping peasants mode to dig faster when Nils sent him a message:
“This ain’t no emerald, genius. It’s a color-change chrysoberyl and I am calling it ‘diaphanite‘ which is Greek for ‘something your small brain cannot comprehend’.”
I paraphrase, of course.
Perovski, ever the ladder climber, had other plans in mind. He wanted to ingratiate himself further with the royal family, Perovski spun a tale that he had discovered it April 17, 1834, the sixteenth birthday of the crown prince and heir to the throne Alexander II, and named it “Alexandrite” in his honor.
Perovski didn’t know how to be a very good scientist, but he knew how to play the game like a champ. His ploy was well received and he got his ass ingratiated into the royal family like no body’s business; creating the Russian Geographical Society in 1845 and being named the Minister of Internal Affairs, and later the Vice President of the Appanage Department by Tsar Nicholas I (basically, he became the dude in charge of the imperial family’s estates, investments, personal property, and income). This fancy post also meant that Perovski was in charge of the jeweled trinkets and souvenirs the imperial lapists and jewelers created as rewards for the Tsar’s subjects.
Perovski was a greedy piece of crap. He used his position of power to threaten, bribe and steal the best stones for the Appanage collection which often found their ways into his own personal collection. One of Perovski’s underlings, Yakov Kokovin, the director of the Ekaterinburg lapidary, stole an amazing Ural emerald and was caught by Perovski and was braought to trail and later was “compelled” to commit suicide in the dreadful Ekaterinburg Prison. When Perovski finally kicked the bucket in 1856, the stone, which had now become known as the “Kokovin Emerald”, was found in Perovski’s personal collection. Dick.
Alexandrite quickly became one of the most desirable gem stones in the world. Many sources I have read claim that this is because red and green were the primary colors on the Russian Imperial Flag. Well, considering that the Imperial Flag was red white and blue, this “fact” is bullshit. It became popular because it is a rad stone that CHANGES FREAKING COLOR! Imagine yourself a rich asshole living in Feudal Europe: you have a fancy house, you have some books, you have a really comfy chair, you have candelabras, you have… well, that is pretty much it. Some other rich asshole comes along and shows you his new ring that is green during the day and red at night. “Holy shit!” You’d yell out, “I’ve got to get me one of those, especially since the invention of television won’t happen for another 90 years!”
By the beginning of the 20th century Russia had pretty much gobbled up all of the Alexandrites in the Urals. There has been no significant deposits of Alexandrite discovered in Mother Russia since the 1917 revolution. To this day the best red/green specimens are Russian stones. They are also the most valuable.
As mentioned above, Alexandrites are a form of chrysoberyl. While chrysoberyls contain beryllium, they are not related to beryls (emeralds, aquamarine, Bixbite, Morganite, etc…)… Only sort of-ish, I guess. Here’s how I would describe the stone as if I were the beaten, over-qualified interpretive guide of the hypothetical “Chrysoberyl Museum” leading a group of tourists in flip flops and aloha shirts:
Leading the tour group into the great hall of the museum: “Chrysoberyls are different from beryls mainly because of their crystal structure. Beryls are silicates that have big molecules and chrysoberyls only have one beryllium atom so there is less crap glommed onto the beryl atom. Chrysoberyls only form in pegmatites–“
“But so do Beryls!” Says some interrupting know it all eight year old.
“Shut up, not all of them do!” Says the pissed off tour guide, “Some beryls form in rhyolites. Ha! Now shut your yap and let me do my damned job!”
“What’s a pegmatite?” Asks some oafish dad dragging his bored children along (noses buried in their cell phones).
“Well, that’s a stupid question,” replies the guide (the know it all eight year old nods his head in agreement), “Especially considering that there isn’t a geologist alive that can accurately describe it to you without sounding like a child explaining the story line to “Syriana”. The facts: a pegmatite is an igneous rock (meaning that it was once molten magma goo that formed far beneath the crust); it created big crystals in its matrix as it cooled; the stuff inside those crystals is similar to that of granite (you know, the kitchen counters in the homes of yuppies); and for geologists it’s like porn, you know it when you see it. Does that help?”
“No.”
“Whatever. Moving on. When this magma comes oozing up deep from the mantle, it can begin to gather up a bunch of ground water as it moves higher through the Earth’s crust. The magma is too hot to allow the now super-heated water to join into the formation of any crystals inside the magma. By the time the magma had mostly cooled, the trapped water formed chrysoberyl in the cracks and crevices out of bits of beryllium and aluminum. Basically, if it wasn’t for the water being present in the magma, the oxide that is chrysoberyl could not find the oxygen needed to form in the first place! All you need to make Alexandrite from here is some chromium and your set! Pretty bitchin’, right? Does that help?”
“No.”
The eight year old nods because he already knew that.
*Sigh* “OK, beryls are a silicates that have the basic chemical composition of Be3Al2(SiO3)6, meaning the crystalline molecule forms an asymmetrical spur on one side of the molecule leading to a hexagonal crystal when the molecules are stacked, like parallelograms. While chrysoberyls are tinier than beryls and only have one beryllium atom to form around, so their crystal structure is much more symmetrical and forms an orthorhombic arrangements, sort of like cubes with dips in the middle. Does that help?”
“No.”
Eight year old roles his eyes because everyone should know that by now.
Considering that none of you have learned anything from the prolonged inside joke above, I digress… To find Chrysoberyls one essentially needs to find pegmatites with beryllium and that also look like they had a lot of water in them when they formed. To find Alexandrites you find those same pegmatites but also look for evidence of there being chromium too.
The great things about gemstones is that there is always a new discovery to be found somewhere. Once the Ural source for these groovy stones played out, other deposits began to be discovered. Also, these pegmatites don’t just form chrysoberyls, they will have also have formed fantastic crystals of quartz, garnets, tourmaline, spinel, and corundum to boot. So, where there are chrysoberyls there are a shit load of other stuff to make some overlord really rich.
Most significant mineral discoveries come from alluvial deposits along some river or stream. In early 20th century discoveries of Alexandrite were made in Sri Lanka and India where the stones were nothing more than weathered pebbles found in streams. The stones are not of the most vivid color; with color changes going from brownish-orange to yellowish-brown. Other discoveries of Alexandrites have been made in Tanzania, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and Brazil with most of the today’s production coming from mines in India and Brazil.
In Brazil, Alexandrites and other forms of chrysoberyls are found in the states of Espento Santos, Bahia, and Minas Gerais. Minas Gerais means “general mines” and was settled by prospectors looking for gold. Later, discoveries of diamonds, rhodonite, tourmalines, garnets, and everything else one would expect made it one of the great gem centers of the world. Miners in Minas Gerais work at the earth in the most primitive fashion imaginable. Modern mining technology isn’t really needed in an area where one can unearth a million dollar stone while digging a latrine, or putting a fence post in the ground! Noosphere Geologic has a near flawless 8.53 carat oval cut Brazilian Alexandrite as the flagship stone in our collection.
There have been several places in North America where one can find chrysoberyls: Pend Orielle County, Washington (also home to some GIGANTIC green beryls); the Black Hills of South Dakota; the border region of Nevada and Arizona in Northwestern Arizona; in North Central Colorado in the Front Range; and all along the Appalachian Mountains (basically the same age and type of mountains as the Urals) from North Carolina, Virginia, and all throughout New England. The only place so far, that I know of, where Alexandrites have been found in the United States is at the La Madera Mountain mine in Rio Arriba County, in central New Mexico, which is reported to produce occasional small chrysoberyl crystals with weak color change. I have yet to see any of these stones first hand, but I plan on getting me some!
Natural Alexandrites are among the most valuable stones in the world. True, clean red/green stones sell for more than $10,000 per carat. When the stones have more of a brownish or orange tint to the colors they sell for about $2,000 per carat; with raspberry/blue stones (common to the Brazilian variety) selling for about$8,000-$10,000 per carat. If the stone is Russian then expect to pay $50,000 per carat. If the stone is Russian, with red/green color change, is over ten carats, and is inclusion-free, just put a million dollar minimum on it from the get-go.
You can find a bunch of beautiful examples of lab-created synthetic Alexandrites out there, as well as imitation stones that are usually lab-created colorchange spinel or colorchange sapphire that are made with vanadium. Sometimes you can find “crown” or “doublet” Alexandrites that have thin, real sheets of Alexandrite glued to a different stone and sold as the real thing. If you are going to purchase an Alexandrite, take it to someone who knows what they are doing. Look for bubbles or curved striations inside of the stone with a microscope; this is a sign that it is lab-created and should only sell for a few dollars per carat. Also, having a certification from a reputable gemological laboratory is a good idea (like the GIA, EGL, AGL, Swiss Lab, IGTL, etc…), this will give you confidence that what you are purchasing is the real deal. You don’t want to drop $40,000 on that engagement ring to find out that you just bought a $5 stone that was made at a lab in an office park in Bangkok!
