February Birthstone Amethyst: From Bishops to Brazil
Amethyst is the February birthstone, and February is the one month every older tradition agrees on. Kunz set eight historical birthstone lists side by side in 1913, and amethyst held February in all eight.
For most of recorded history amethyst kept company with ruby and emerald in royal and church treasuries. Brazilian and Uruguayan deposits reached the German cutting trade in the nineteenth century, and by 1904 a standard gemology text recorded that fine amethyst had lost its old standing.
Purple in amethyst comes from iron and natural radiation inside quartz. Trade names like Siberian and Rose de France describe how deep that purple runs, not where the stone was mined.
Bishops have worn amethyst rings since at least the seventh century. One account explains the color as a reminder of the wine of the Eucharist, which is where the name bishop's stone comes from.
Heat turns amethyst into citrine. Most yellow quartz sold as citrine started out purple, which is why February and November share a mineral.
Queen Charlotte owned an amethyst necklace. At the start of the nineteenth century it was worth a small fortune. By 1904 a standard gem handbook noted that the same necklace would scarcely find a buyer. The stones had not changed. Brazil had.
The February birthstone amethyst is the one gem on the calendar that lost its rank inside a hundred years, and it lost it to geology rather than to taste. Deposits in Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais and Uruguay began sending rough to the German cutting town of Idar-Oberstein by the ton. A stone Europe had almost none of became a stone anyone could own. The color did not thin out. Only the scarcity did.
That one fact explains most of what follows. It explains why the grading language is so exact about depth of purple. It explains why every era from the Georgians forward used amethyst, and used it differently. And it explains why so much good antique amethyst is still around to buy. Before Brazil, amethyst sat beside ruby and emerald in treasure lists. Bishops wore it on the right hand, and Catherine the Great sent men into the Urals for it.
Why Is the February Birthstone Amethyst?
Amethyst has held February in every birthstone tradition anyone wrote down, and the American trade made that official in August 1912. No other month has that kind of agreement behind it.
The 1912 meeting solved a business problem. Birthstone picks varied by country and by century, and in practice they varied by whatever a jeweler had in the case that week. The American National Retail Jewelers Association met at its August meeting in Kansas City and settled on one national list. Several months got argued over and changed: March put aquamarine ahead of bloodstone, and August put peridot ahead of sardonyx. February was never in doubt.
The reason turns up in the scholarship that followed a year later. George Frederick Kunz was Tiffany's vice president and the leading American gemologist of his day, and in The Curious Lore of Precious Stones (1913) he printed eight older birthstone lists side by side. Jewish, Roman, Arabian, Polish, Russian, Italian, the list credited to Isidore of Seville, and the working European list of the fifteenth through twentieth centuries. The eight argue with each other constantly, about March, about August, about November. All eight give February to amethyst. It is the only month with no dissent, and the traditions that agree on it share almost nothing else.
Amethyst is the stone that lost its rank and kept its color
Ask about amethyst birthstone meaning and the anniversary question usually follows close behind. Amethyst marks the sixth and the seventeenth. There is a St Valentine story too: accounts describe a ring set with an amethyst engraved with a Cupid, which is where the February 14 link comes from. That is a report rather than a surviving object. The birthstone jewelry guide lays out all twelve months. September's sapphire and July's ruby were assigned by the same room in the same year, and neither had February's easy time of it.
What Does Amethyst Symbolize?
Sobriety, first from the Greek name and then from the church. Amethyst is the bishop's stone, worn on the right hand of Catholic bishops for something like fourteen centuries.
The name is amethystos, not intoxicated, and the belief behind it is older than the Greek word. Pliny recorded it in the first century and refused to believe it, filing the anti-drunkenness claim under what he called the abominable falsehoods of the Magi. Ancient writers found it funny too, and a Greek epigram describes Cleopatra's signet as an amethyst engraved with Methe, the goddess of intoxication. By that telling, the joke was the point.
The church kept the link and made it permanent. The Council of Toledo in 633 already lists the stole, the ring and the crosier among what a bishop receives. So the ring predates the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which only made it required. Violet is the color of penance, and one account puts it more plainly: the hue of the amethyst called to mind the color of the wine used in the Eucharist. Bishops still receive amethyst signets, and Kunz recorded one modern case, a handsome amethyst signet given to Bishop David H. Greer of New York, later stolen.
The dynastic thread runs from Charlemagne to Cartier. The Talisman of Charlemagne carries amethysts at three points on its band, and Empress Josephine acquired it after visiting Charlemagne's tomb at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1804. Catherine the Great pushed mining into the Urals largely for amethyst, and that is where the trade name Siberian comes from. St Edward's Crown holds seven amethysts, though the honest date is 1911 and not 1661. For most of its life the crown was set with hired stones for each coronation and kept plain the rest of the time, and the permanent setting was made for George V.
Then the century's best-known amethyst piece. In 1947 the Duke of Windsor sent Cartier his own stones and ordered a bib necklace of roughly twenty-seven or twenty-eight step-cut amethysts, plus one oval and one heart. Jeanne Toussaint suggested turquoise cabochons against the purple, which is why the necklace looks like nothing else the house made.
One adjacency needs care. The British suffrage movement took purple, white and green as its colors from 1908, and amethyst turns up in Arts and Crafts jewelry of exactly those years. The color put the stone inside that visual language, but it does not make any one ring a piece of regalia.
What Is the Best Color of Amethyst?
Deep, even purple with a flash of red or blue when you tilt it. That flash is what the trade pays for, and it is the one part of amethyst color grading nobody argues about.
The purple is iron and radiation: quartz picks up trace iron as it grows. Natural radiation in the rock around it knocks that iron into a state that soaks up yellow-green light. What comes back to the eye is violet, and nothing is dyed or coated. The rest of the numbers are plain quartz: refractive index 1.544 to 1.553, specific gravity about 2.65. Amethyst is weakly pleochroic, so it shows slightly different purples down different directions through the crystal, and the cutter decides which purple faces up.
The trade sorts color into four rough steps. Siberian sits at the top: saturated purple with the red or blue flash. Below it comes deep Uruguayan material, then commercial Brazilian, then Rose de France at the pale lavender end. Siberian is a grade, not a place: Catherine the Great's Ural mines gave it the name, and almost no stone sold as Siberian today came out of Russia. The bigger caution is that none of this is standardized. One seller's Siberian is another's deep Uruguayan, so the useful question is what a seller means by the word.
Rome sorted it the same way, and Pliny listed five grades of amethyst by hue and source. He put Indian material at the top and called its best quality a rosy tint shining gently forth. That is the flash, named seventeen centuries before the trade started paying for it.
Expect uneven color. Amethyst grows in the lining of a geode, in bands, so color zoning is normal. Angular zones of stronger and weaker purple are what natural quartz looks like, and a good cutter turns the rough so the eye sees one color face-up. Grade is also a period question. Pale Rose de France stones suited Victorian day jewelry, while deep Siberian purple is what the Retro designers wanted against heavy gold. Filigree's amethyst jewelry runs across that range.
Was Amethyst Once as Precious as Ruby?
Yes, and geology ended it rather than fashion. Amethyst was priced beside ruby and emerald for most of recorded history, and then two South American sources arrived and reset the market inside two lifetimes.
Queen Charlotte's necklace is the cleanest case, because the same object was valued twice a century apart. It was worth a small fortune when the nineteenth century opened. By 1904 the standard gem handbook of the day recorded that it would scarcely find a purchaser, and nobody suggested the stones had faded, chipped or been recut.
What changed was supply, and the mechanism is specific. Idar-Oberstein had cut quartz for centuries off its own local deposits, and by the early 1800s those were worked out. The town's cutting trade survived by importing, and Brazil obliged. Rough came out of Rio Grande do Sul and Minas Gerais, and out of Uruguay, in barrels and hide sacks, alongside citrine, rock crystal and agate. The volume is the part that lands: hundreds of tons a year into one German town. Around 1900 a single geode turned up in the Serra do Mar that ran roughly ten metres long and was put at thirty-five tons. Fifteen tons of it went to Idar in ten pieces.
The market downgraded the stone fast, and in print. A survey of gems published in 1877 already grouped amethyst among stones of inferior value, which is a second period voice, in another country, reaching the same verdict.
None of it touched the mineral, which is the same quartz, with the same color, that sat in church treasuries. The upshot for a buyer now is odd: large amethyst simply exists. A twenty or thirty carat amethyst in a period mount is a normal object, and no comparable emerald or ruby is. The glut is also why amethyst became a house stone in Brazil, and why H. Stern, founded in Rio de Janeiro, built so much of its colored-stone work around it. Most of the last century's big cocktail rings are possible because of it.
How Did Jewelers Use Amethyst From Georgian to Mid-Century?
Every era wanted amethyst for a different reason, and the metalwork tells you which one.
Georgian (1714 to 1837). Amethyst was still costly, but it came in sizes almost nothing else did, and Georgian jewelers built around that. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a full parure of about 1830 in gold and amethyst: comb, a pair of earrings, necklace, brooch and two bracelets, six pieces made to be worn together. The construction is cannetille, fine coiled and scrolled wirework that fills space with wire instead of sheet. Gold was scarce and dear, and cannetille was the answer, so big stones and thin metal went together out of need. Amethyst also carried a letter, because Georgian acrostic jewels spelled words in the first letters of their stones. REGARD in ruby, emerald, garnet, amethyst, ruby and diamond, DEAREST in seven, and amethyst supplied the A in both.
Victorian (1837 to 1901). The Victorians cut amethyst as table stones and step cuts, never brilliants, and how they set it depended on the stone. Deep, even color went into open-back mounts, a jour, with light passing through. Anything paler got a foil backing color-matched to the stone, which lifted a weak purple into something worth wearing. There was also a lighting problem nobody mentions now: under gas and candlelight, fine amethyst went dingy grey. So the best stones ended up in daytime jewelry: brooches, day rings, pieces meant to be seen in a window rather than a ballroom. That is a technical reason the Victorian amethyst brooch is such a common survivor. At the top of the market Carlo Giuliano set amethyst into Renaissance-revival work in gold, enamel, pearl and diamond. The Victorian jewelry guide covers the era's construction habits in full.
Art Nouveau (1890 to 1910). Color choice turns painterly. Theodore B. Starr made a brooch around 1900 that set amethyst against demantoid garnet, purple against green, a pair chosen for what it does to the eye rather than for what either stone cost.
Edwardian (1901 to 1915). Amethyst nearly vanishes from the mainstream, and the palette is why. Edwardian work was platinum, diamonds and pearls, all white, pierced into lace, and color was the exception. Amethyst's Edwardian life happened in the Arts and Crafts shops running alongside. A Child and Child brooch in enamel, amethyst and pearl of about 1900. An enamel and amethyst brooch by Edith Brearey Dawson. A 1901 ring by W. R. Lethaby and Henry Wilson that sets amethyst with emerald, sapphire and ruby.
Art Deco (1920 to 1935). Deco liked amethyst because amethyst takes a hard geometric cut. Hexagons, emerald cuts and baguettes hold an outline, and purple against white gold or platinum is the two-tone contrast the period wanted. Fred Partridge made a silver ring set with baguette amethysts in 1928, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the same museum holds pearl and amethyst work dated 1925. A step-cut amethyst in white gold, with milgrain edges and a pierced filigree gallery, is the signature form.
Retro (1935 to 1950). Scale takes over, and large cushions and ovals go into scrollwork gold, often rose gold, because platinum was rationed. Trabert and Hoeffer-Mauboussin's Reflection line made the oversized cocktail ring a category. Amethyst filled the role citrine did: a big warm stone that could carry a big mount. Verdura set cabochon amethyst at the terminals of Maltese cross brooches.
Mid-Century (1950 to 1970). Two directions at once. Bulgari's Dolce Vita pieces put cabochon Brazilian amethyst next to Colombian emerald and Burmese sapphire in one piece, breaking the French rule that a suite stays one color. At the other end, studio makers stopped faceting altogether, and Andrew Grima and John Donald mounted rough, uncut amethyst crystal in textured gold. A 1963 Donald brooch in the V and A is exactly that: uncut crystal in worked gold. Filigree's vintage jewelry and its amethyst jewelry both span these eras, and vintage amethyst jewelry is where the differences are easiest to see side by side.
Is Amethyst Durable Enough to Wear Every Day?
Yes. Amethyst is quartz, Mohs 7, with no cleavage plane. That makes it one of the more usable colored stones for a ring you never take off.
Hardness and toughness are separate things, and amethyst splits them in a helpful way. Nothing inside the stone wants to part along a plane, so it will not cleave the way a diamond or a topaz can. It does break in curved chips, and a sharp facet edge left standing proud of the metal will meet a doorframe sooner or later. The setting carries that risk, not the stone.
Bezel and flush settings cover the girdle, which is where damage starts. That is the modern advice, and it happens to be old practice for another reason. Georgian and Victorian closed backs were built to control light, and protecting the stone was a side effect. Prongs are fine on pendants and earrings, which take almost no impact. On a working hand, low and covered wins.
Light and heat are the long-term issues, and both follow from where the color comes from. Iron color centers can relax back, so long hours in direct sun will pale a stone over years. Heat does it faster and does not reverse. That is not a reason to keep amethyst in a drawer. It is a reason to keep a ring off a sunny windowsill and out of a sauna.
Cleaning is warm water, mild soap and a soft brush. An ultrasonic is fine on a sound, untreated stone, but not on a foiled antique mount, where water gets behind the foil and ruins it, and not on a stone with a fracture reaching the surface. Skip the steamer, since heat is the one thing this stone will not forgive. Store it away from diamond, sapphire and ruby, all of which will scratch it. The jewelry care guide covers cleaning by stone type.
Can Amethyst Be Heated Into Citrine?
Yes, and most citrine on the market started out purple: heat shifts the iron inside the quartz, and the stone comes out yellow to orange.
The temperatures are known closely now. Below roughly 420 degrees Celsius the violet fades slowly without changing character. Between about 420 and 440 the color center is at its least stable, and green prasiolite can form in that narrow window. Above 440 the iron settles into the yellow-orange state that gets sold as citrine, and trade runs usually aim near 560. Cool it down and the color stays put, which is what makes the treatment worth doing.
The effect was known long before the numbers were. Bauer's 1904 gem handbook describes amethyst turning yellow, then green, then colorless under heat, and notes that a large share of the citrine in the trade was burnt amethyst. His figure is far lower than the modern one, because 1904 had no way to see what was happening inside the crystal. Cite him for the history, not for the science. What he settles is that the trade was already doing this before anyone knew why it worked.
Prasiolite is the green outcome, and it gets sold as green amethyst. The trade bodies object on the simple ground that the stone is no longer purple, and nearly all of it is heated or irradiated amethyst rather than natural. Ametrine is the other variant worth knowing: one crystal that runs purple at one end and yellow at the other, cut so both show. Nearly all of it comes from the Anahi mine in the Bolivian Pantanal, and the story of a conquistador receiving the mine as a dowry is legend rather than history.
All of it is stable, accepted and disclosed, which is the part that matters at a counter. Heat treatment on quartz does not fade or reverse in wear, and a seller should say when a stone has had it. It is also why February and November are linked at the mineral level: same quartz, same iron, a few hundred degrees apart. Filigree's amethyst jewelry is untreated purple material rather than the yellow end of the range.
Continue Reading
Amethyst Jewelry
February's stone across the eras, from a Victorian brooch and an Art Deco bracelet to modern stacking rings.
Browse Amethyst →Cocktail Rings
Where the largest amethysts live: substantial stones in gold and platinum mounts, Victorian through modern.
Browse Cocktail Rings →Birthstone Jewelry Guide
The complete birthstone calendar with Filigree's pieces for every month of the year.
View the Guide →A stone that lost its rank and kept its color
Amethyst is the stone that lost its rank and kept its color. That is the whole story, and it explains the two things that make it worth collecting. Because it was precious for two thousand years, it picked up the kind of history most colored stones never get: episcopal rings, a Carolingian talisman, a Russian empress with a mining program, a coronation crown. Because it stopped being precious around 1900, every era after that could afford to experiment with it. A Georgian parure, a Victorian day brooch, a Deco hexagon, a Retro cocktail ring and a rough mid-century crystal are all the same mineral doing completely different work.
The buying decision comes down to two things, and both are visible in a photograph. Depth and evenness of the purple, and whether the setting protects the girdle. Everything else is a question of which era you want on your hand. The full range is in Filigree's amethyst jewelry.
Ready to Find Your February Stone
From a Victorian brooch and an Art Deco bracelet to a modern cocktail ring, the collection carries amethyst across two centuries of design.
Tuesday–Friday 11AM–6PM · Saturday 11AM–5PM
February Birthstone Amethyst
What anniversary is amethyst?
The sixth and the seventeenth. The sixth is the older of the two and comes down through the same European tradition that gave February to amethyst. Both are still in general use, so an amethyst piece works for either milestone without any explaining.
What is the difference between amethyst and purple sapphire?
They are different minerals. Amethyst is quartz at 7 on the Mohs scale. Purple sapphire is corundum at 9, and it is denser and brighter. The old trade name for violet sapphire was oriental amethyst, which is precisely where the confusion started.
Is "Siberian" amethyst really from Siberia?
Almost never. Siberian began as a source name for Ural material mined under Catherine the Great, and it survives as a grade meaning the deepest purple with a red or blue flash. Ask a seller what they mean by it, since the term is not standardized.
What is green amethyst?
Prasiolite. It is nearly always amethyst that has been heated or irradiated into green, and gemological bodies discourage the name green amethyst because the stone is no longer purple. Natural prasiolite exists and is rare. Either way, the treatment should be disclosed.
What metal looks best with amethyst?
Yellow and rose gold warm the purple and push it toward red. White gold and platinum cool it and make the same stone look bluer. Neither is correct in the abstract, and in vintage pieces the period usually decides: Victorian gold, Deco white metal, Retro rose.
