Lepidolite is a mica, and that single fact explains most of what you need to know about handling it. Micas grow in thin sheets, one stacked on the next, and lepidolite carries the family trait to the extreme. It is soft (two and a half to four on the hardness scale). The lilac colour comes from the lithium in it, and the sparkle across the surface is thousands of those tiny flat sheets catching light at once.

It is not an ancient stone in the way amethyst or lapis are. The mineral was named in 1792, from the Greek lepidos, meaning scale. In 1817 a Swedish chemist examining a specimen of it isolated a new element, and that element was lithium. So the modern associations around lepidolite, where they exist, are only about two centuries old and they follow directly from that discovery.

Most of what reaches the market comes out of Brazil, Madagascar and Zimbabwe, and there is good material from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. 

It usually forms in pegmatite, the same coarse rock that carries the black tourmaline I wrote about, and the two of them very often turn up in the same ground for the same reason. Rich purple material is the most sought after, and lepidolite grows alongside pink tourmaline often enough that the two are sometimes found fused in one piece.

Traditionally associated with

Lepidolite is traditionally associated with the evening and with a settled room, and it is the stone most often kept at the bedside or on a dressing table. In practice it tends to be reached for at the end of the day rather than the start of a working. 

How I'd keep it

Keep lepidolite dry. Water gets between the sheets and lifts them, and once a mica surface has flaked there is no repairing it. Dust with a soft dry brush or cloth, never a damp one, and keep it well away from acids and household cleaners. 

It is far too soft to carry loose in a bag or a pocket. A freeform wants a shelf or a bedside table where it is picked up rather than knocked. Lithium-bearing mica is harmless to handle.

What to watch for

Lepidolite is sold dyed, and the test is the same one that applies to rose quartz: colour that sits in the cracks and crevices is dye, colour that runs through the sheets is the stone. Genuine lepidolite is also almost never uniformly purple: expect a mix of lilac, silver-grey mica and pale quartz through one piece. Where it is advertised as "pink lepidolite", check whether you are being shown lepidolite or pink tourmaline, because they are different stones that grow together and are regularly sold under each other's names.

In the shop

The Lepidolite Freeform at £40 is the piece I carry. It is a natural freeform rather than a polished shape, so the sparkle comes off the crystal faces across the surface as it is turned towards the light.

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