Citrine A Tumbled Gemstone

Citrine is quartz: stable, non-toxic, and safe to handle or rinse briefly. Long exposure to strong sunlight can pale some pieces, so store it out of direct sun, and avoid sudden temperature changes, which can crack quartz.

Natural citrine grows in quartz veins, pegmatites, and geodes, where silica-rich fluids cool slowly into crystal and trace impurities, with natural radiation in the surrounding rock, tint it pale lemon to honey gold. It is uncommon in nature, so much of the citrine sold today began as amethyst, and sometimes smoky quartz, heated until it turned golden to orange.

Citrine is the yellow to orange-brown variety of macrocrystalline quartz, silicon dioxide (SiO2). There is no scientific consensus on what colors natural citrine; aluminum-related color centers similar to those in smoky quartz and trace iron have both been proposed. The color of heat-treated amethyst comes from tiny iron-oxide inclusions (hematite and goethite). Citrine crystallizes in the trigonal system, rates 7 on the Mohs scale, and has a vitreous luster.

• Citrine was known for centuries before it came into its own in Hellenistic Greece, where its sunny color was first truly prized for jewelry and carved gems.
• A first-century Roman citrine intaglio, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, is engraved with Bonus Eventus, the personified spirit of good outcome and success, an early link between the golden stone and prosperity.
• Traders came to call citrine the Merchant's Stone, keeping a piece in the cash box or beside the till in the belief that it would draw customers in and help profits stay.