Rose Quartz Beaded Bracelet

Rose quartz is non-toxic and water-safe. Most pieces hold their color, but some can pale with long exposure to strong sunlight or high heat, so recharge it in moonlight or indirect light.

Rose quartz is among the oldest love talismans known: beads found in Mesopotamia date to around 7000 BCE, the Assyrians were crafting rose quartz jewelry by 800 to 600 BCE, and Egyptian and Roman cultures later prized it. It forms at high temperature in granitic pegmatites, where it grows as massive pink quartz tinted by microscopic mineral fibers. Today it is mined in Madagascar, Brazil, South Africa, Namibia, India, Japan and the United States.

Rose quartz is a pink variety of quartz, silicon dioxide (SiO2), crystallizing in the trigonal system and almost always occurring as massive material rather than distinct crystals. Studies attribute its color to microscopic fibrous inclusions of a borosilicate mineral related to dumortierite, present at well under one percent by weight. It has a Mohs hardness of 7 and no cleavage. Most rose quartz is light-stable, though some material can pale with prolonged strong sunlight, and heating above roughly 500 degrees Celsius fades it. Rare star rose quartz shows a six-rayed asterism from oriented needle-like inclusions.

• In Greek myth, Eros, the god of desire, is said to have brought rose quartz to earth so its pink glow might stir love and tenderness among mortals.
• A Greek and Roman legend tells of Aphrodite tearing herself on a briar as she ran to her wounded lover Adonis; their mingled blood stained white quartz pink, marking it as a stone of love that outlasts loss.
• Ancient Egyptians believed rose quartz could hold back the signs of aging, and Romans carved it into seals used to mark ownership.