Goldstone Beaded Bracelet

Goldstone is glass and can chip or develop sharp edges if dropped; avoid hard knocks and prolonged water or salt soaking, which can dull its polish.

Goldstone is not a natural mineral but a man-made aventurine glass first produced in 17th-century Venice and attributed to the glassmaker Vincenzo Miotti, whose family kept the formula secret for generations. It is made by fusing copper into molten silica glass and cooling it slowly in a low-oxygen furnace, which allows tiny metallic copper crystals to form and create its signature sparkle.

Goldstone is a soda-lime silica glass in which microscopic octahedral crystals of metallic copper are suspended, producing an optical shimmer called aventurescence. The classic reddish-brown to gold variety is colored by copper; blue and purple goldstone use cobalt glass with copper, and green goldstone is colored with chromium. Because it is an amorphous glass rather than a crystalline mineral, it has no fixed chemical formula.

• Folklore credits goldstone's accidental birth to Italian monks who spilled copper filings into molten glass, though the earliest reliable record points to the 17th-century Venetian glassmaker Vincenzo Miotti.
• The Miotti family guarded the recipe as a closely held secret for generations, and the material became known in Italy as 'avventurina', from 'a ventura' meaning 'by chance'.
• Because of its glittering copper heart, goldstone earned the folk name 'the stone of ambition' and was carried as a talisman for drive and attainment.