A retail jeweller client of mine, of many years also has many clients who have been buying jewellery from him for generations. One such lady's husband bought her a very large Tanzanite gem. Set into a pendant and surrounded by brilliant white diamonds for the colour contrast. To imagine a Tanzanite, think of deep violet velvet with a slight sparkle to it, they are beautiful and rare gemstones.
Now because this lady was such a special client, she was sometimes invited by the retail jeweller to come to my jewellery manufacturing workshop to see the actual making of a piece of jewellery she had ordered. This Tanzanite pendant was one such piece. When the lady arrived at the workshop, the pendant was nearing completion and was being polished in the polishing room, where we have various types of machinery. A lot of rouge is used in polishing the jewellery and apart from shining up the metal, a lot of rouge dust gets all over the piece of jewellery in the process. The excess dust is then cleaned off of the jewellery with a specifically designed steam cleaning machine which can be adjusted to clean a two millimeter square spot when necessary. This accuracy is necessary when working with large gemstones so that you can steam clean the gold right next to the stone without changing the temperature of the gemstone too much or too quickly. A rapid heating or cooling can be fatal to some gemstones. Tanzanites included.
About a month after this at her home, the lady was showing her friends her new piece of jewellery and everyone was handling it to admire and hold close, so it became dull with everyones fingerprints all over it. She decided to clean it, and instead of just wiping it clean with a soft cloth, she went to her cappuccino machine in her kitchen and held the Tanzanite directly under the steam nozzle for a few minutes, making it nice and clean and shiny and Hot. Then she rinsed it under the cold tap.
That broke it !
Right down the middle, so she now had two Tanzanites.
She phoned the jeweller immediately and asked him to find her a replacement Tanzanite identical to the one she had just broken. She wanted it as quickly as possible so that she could replace it before her husband found out about it. A replacement stone was found and re-set into the pendant. The stone was obviously not identical, but very close. The two pieces of the original stone were kept in the Jewellers safe for sometime in the future.
I think that someone at a good lapidary workshop could cut them into a matching pair for a pair of earrings for her or she could have them made up into pendants for her daughters to wear.
Something will be done with them. She does own them after all.