All about Alexandrite – Buy Alexandrite Jewelry Online

Would you like to own a gemstone that can change colour like magic and is one of the rarest and most expensive gemstones in the world? Well, if you have answered ‘yes’ then you will want to buy some exquisite alexandrite jewelry. Alexandrite like all gemstones is formed in the depths of the earth and brought to the surface only by mining or natural geological forces, but what makes alexandrite unusual is that it has only been known to the world for the last couple of hundred years. Alexandrite is a gemstone that was totally unknown in antiquity and was discovered in the Ural Mountains of Russia as recently as the 1830s. The identity of the person who collected the first sample of alexandrite is now unknown, but the sample ended up in the hands of the Finnish mineralogist Nils Gustaf Nordenskjold, who initially thought that it was emerald. However, on further examination the gemstone sample seemed to be too hard to be emerald so he continued his investigations and was astonished to find that when he looked at the gemstone in candlelight that it had completely changed colour. He later came to the conclusion that his sample was a totally new gemstone and so he named his new discovery ‘diaphanite’.
Alexandrite and the Russian Imperial Family

The gemstone sample had been sent to Nordenskjold by Count Lev Alekseevich Perovskii, who was a close associate of the Russian Imperial Family and a passionate collector of gemstones and minerals, with a reputation for often using unscrupulous and violent means to obtain unique and valuable gems for his collection. There is a popular story that Nils Gustaf Nordenskjold had discovered alexandrite in 1834 on the sixteenth birthday of the Russian tsarevitch, who would go on to be Tsar Alexander II of Russia. However, it is more likely that Perovskii presented the new gemstone to the tsarevitch wholesale costume jewelry on his sixteenth birthday in order to further ingratiate himself into royal circles, and it was around this time that the new gemstones began to be known as alexandrite. Alexandrite became a hugely popular gem with the Romanovs, who adopted it as their very own gemstone, and the colours of alexandrite even matched the colours of the uniforms of the Imperial Guard.