Kyanite Rainbow Aura Dragonfly

For someone who wants quartz's usual clarity with a little more shimmer.

Aura quartz starts as ordinary clear quartz, then goes through a modern process borrowed from electronics manufacturing: it's placed in a vacuum chamber and bonded with a microscopically thin layer of vaporised metal, which fuses permanently to the crystal's surface and refracts light into an iridescent sheen. The technique dates to the 1980s. Different metals give different names and colours — gold vapour produces Aqua Aura's electric blue, platinum gives the soft rainbow of Angel Aura.

The coating is real and permanent, fused rather than painted, though it sits on the surface rather than running through the stone.

Aura quartz is worked with as an amplifier with a lighter touch — quartz's usual focus, softened and brightened. It sits with all centres, depending on the coating.

Sheri chooses every piece by hand, cleanses it, and charges it before it's packed here on the Gold Coast.

The coating can scratch — handle it a little more gently than plain quartz.

One of two crystals that clear themselves.

Kyanite grows in long bladed crystals, and it has a property almost unique among minerals: its hardness changes depending on which direction you scratch it. Along the blade it's soft enough to mark with a knife; across it, hard enough to resist steel. Mineralogists call it disthene — two strengths.

The blue comes from titanium, and the best material — deep, almost sapphire — comes from Nepal and Brazil. It forms under high pressure in metamorphic rock, which is to say it was made by being squeezed.

Kyanite is worked with for alignment and for clear speech, and it's one of the few stones understood not to hold onto anything — like selenite, it doesn't need cleansing. It sits with the throat and third eye.

Sheri chooses every piece by hand, cleanses it, and charges it before it's packed here on the Gold Coast.