Alexandrite is a chrysoberyl, which is a piece of good fortune for anyone who intends to actually wear it. On the Mohs scale it sits at 8.5 — just below sapphire and ruby, and well above emerald, which is the stone most people have in mind when they treat coloured gems as fragile. It has no cleavage plane waiting to split, and it takes the ordinary knocks of a life without complaint. A piece of ours is not built for a decade. It is built to be handed on.
That said, hardness is not invulnerability, and almost all the wear a fine piece shows after a few years comes from a handful of avoidable things.
The first is grit. Nothing dulls a stone faster than a film of hand cream, soap and skin oil, which settles under the pavilion where you cannot see it and quietly stops light getting in. A stone that looks tired is nearly always a stone that is dirty. Warm water with a little washing-up soap, a soft brush worked gently behind and beneath the stone, a rinse and a dry with a soft cloth will restore it completely, and doing it once a month is plenty. Nothing stronger is needed and nothing stronger is a good idea: household cleaners, bleach and chlorine attack the metal and the setting long before they trouble the stone. Take the piece off before you use them, and before a swimming pool or a hot tub.
The second is other jewellery. Diamonds scratch everything, including alexandrite, and a drawer where pieces sit loose together will do more damage in a year than a decade of wearing. Store the piece on its own — a pouch, a lined box, its own compartment.
The third is force rather than abrasion. Take it off for the gym, for heavy lifting, for gardening, for anything where the setting could catch and a prong could bend. A blow hard enough to move a prong will not chip the stone, but it can loosen it, and a loose stone is the one real emergency in jewellery. If a piece ever rattles, or sounds different when you tap it lightly against your fingernail, stop wearing it and write to me.
On ultrasonic cleaners, the ones a jeweller keeps on the counter: alexandrite tolerates them, but an old repair, a fracture-filled side stone or a stone already slightly loose does not, and the machine will find that weakness rather than reveal it gently. Warm water and a brush cost nothing and risk nothing. That is what I would do at home.
The colour change asks nothing of you at all — it is a property of the chromium inside the crystal and it does not fade, weaken or wear out. It only asks for the right light. Daylight, or an overcast sky by a window, gives the green. Candlelight in a dark room gives the red, and it gives it far more completely than any bulb will, which is why it remains the best way to show the stone to someone who has not seen it change. Let their eyes adjust for a minute before you bring the piece out.
Your piece carries a two-year warranty from the day after it reached you, and it covers repairs — a stone that has moved, a prong that has worn, a clasp that has failed. Shipping in both directions on warranty work within the United States is ours, insured, and we arrange it. Sizing is a separate matter: fingers change over the years, and a resize is a service we quote for the individual job rather than something the warranty absorbs, since it is a change to the piece rather than a fault in it. Ask whenever the question arises and I will tell you plainly what is involved.
Beyond that, there is nothing you need to do and nothing you need to buy. No annual service, no treatment, no reconditioning. Keep it clean, keep it apart from other pieces, take it off for the rough parts of the week, and the piece will outlast every one of us who has touched it so far.
