Green amethyst cleaning and care

Introduction

This relatively small green amethyst website has been up and running for quite some time now. I have got a nice response from you - thanks for your interest - and received a number of emails with suggestions and questions. Some of them, unfortunately, were also referring to a number of green amethyst related problems.

These problems -- mostly connected to cleaning and care of green amethyst prasiolite jewelry -- is what I would like to discuss in this article and hopefully give you some useful hints and advices. I would also like to encourage you to do your own research on the subject of prasiolite gemology.

How to take care of green amethyst jewelry

• As a general rule, the greened version of amethyst is very sensitive to any type of energy influx, which includes also heat, sunlight, irradiation and other external influences. Especially you should never expose your prasiolite jewelry to extensive or even moderate heat. If you have a prasiolite green amethyst ring, bracelet, necklace, pendant or other jewelry items you would like to resize, this might not be a good idea. We know that resizing often implies thermal treatment of your jewelry. Some inexperienced jewelers might overlook the
  sensitivity of the gemstone's color when it comes to heating, which as a result might have fading or complete loss of its wondrous but delicate green nuances.

• While jewelers often recommend using a vessel of warm, or lukewarm soapy water for cleaning rock crystal jewelry, in the case of (green) amethyst stones (remember that amethyst is a variety of rock crystal) I would not suggest using overly heated water (see above), and if you want to use soap, let it be a gentle non abrasive soap. Otherwise, just use tab water and a gentle toothbrush to clean your jewellery, as you would not want to scratch your gemstone or its support. Amethyst has fairly high hardness, somewhere around 7 or above -- meaning fairly high resistivity to scratching -- but nevertheless extra caution is always welcome when dealing with this tender, from the point of view of color, stone. Instead of brush, you could use a cloth, but then you probably would not be able to clean all difficult to access spots of your green amethyst ring, earrings, or pendant. Use delicate circular movements.

• Although the majority of people would probably not agree, crystals have an astonishing ability to absorb energies -- both positive and negative vibrations from the space around them. Therefore, cleaning and care of all the physical dirt and grease is not enough, as you would also want to release all those accumulated subtle energies in form of negative emotional or thought patterns. Rinse off your amethyst (prasiolite) stone with clean water. For that purposes just let the tab water run for a couple of minutes over your prasiolite gemstone jewelry item, and visualize how it gradually becomes as pure and innocent as it can possibly be. Remember to use your bowl underneath the stone, just in case to be sure that you do not accidentally drop it and loose it down the waste pipe.
  
  You can also use other methods to achieve this "inner" sort of cleansing, but the described one is most convenient for everyday use and for most people. Always have in mind that crystals are amongst the purest things that can be found on Earth, and their purity can be considered as a sort of ideal that we can move toward and achieve one day in our inner life of our souls.

• The final step of cleansing your green amethyst jewelry items is using a soft cloth to wipe out all the traces of water off their surface. Alternatively you might leave them be for a couple of minutes, but in this case they will probably spot. I always use my microfiber cloth which eliminates this possibility completely. 

Restoring color to green amethyst prasiolite

For the end I would like to discuss the unfortunate prospect of green amethyst prasiolite loosing its wondrous color. Some have asked this question after having their jewelry resized, during which process the heat had damaged the color of this gemstone. What this means in most cases for the stones is loosing their delicate green color and becoming transparent instead. I do not know wheter there is a way to restore the green color in practice. Theoretically, you can try with irradiation. It is known that by irradiating colorless quartz from some areas of the world, they become black or gray, and thus artificial smoky quartz, cairngorm is produced. One again, I have no experience with this and I believe that in any case the procedure is without guarantee. However, you cannot do this part alone, you would need (probably) an experienced jeweler producer with proper equipment to do this. If some of the readers have tried restoring the green shade of their green amethyst crystals that have faded after some excessive treatment of for whatever reason, please make a comment bellow.

Concluding remarks

Unfortunately, not all green amethyst prasiolite gemstones out there are genuine. Many of them are produced in laboratory, or say, by using some artificial treatments (btw, the differences of synthetic vs natural green amethyst are not so easy to spot). Therefore, if you are the proud owner of one such beautiful stone, being extra cautious with it is a measure that can ensure that you will enjoy your favorite ring, necklace, pendant, brooch, and other jewelry made from green amethyst.