Monday 30 March 2009

Tsavorite



I have been reading about gems lately and was fascinated to come across one beautiful mineral of which I had never even heard. Tsavorite or tsavolite is a variety of the garnet group species grossular, a calcium-aluminium garnet with the formula Ca3Al2Si3O12. Trace amounts of vanadium or chromium provide the green colour. Green grossular had been rare until 1967, when British gem prospector and geologist Campbell R. Bridges came across a deposit of the mineral in the mountains of north-east Tanzania.


Weighing in at 325.14 carats and priced well over two million dollars, this extraordinary tsavorite is one of the largest most valuable gems ever to be discovered in East Africa. It was exhibited in January 2007. An exceptional gemstone, most likely the largest fine colour clean tsavorite in the world, it was discovered near Arusha, Tanzania.

The uncut stone weighed 185 grams and was preformed and faceted in Thailand. The impressive size and saturated colour combined with remarkable clarity and transparency put this stone in a class of its own.

Even tsavorites over 2 cts. in size are considered to be rare so an amazing stone like this will certainly end up with a collector or in a museum. At 325.13 carats, this stone is the probably the largest and definitely the largest clean tsavorite in the world.

8 comments:

  1. Jeannette St.G.30 March 2009 at 08:20

    Wow, beautiful stone!

    ReplyDelete
  2. ~brilliant in color. I really favor green gems, oh, and red, oh and yellow...and clear and...and...and :o)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beautiful. I had never heard of them either.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gorgeous stones, Scriptor!

    ReplyDelete
  5. It is beautiful, although I'm not much into the green stones.
    I do have a Tanzanite ring that I love!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I had not heard of this gem either but one of the engagement rings I bought was of tanzanite - another extremely rare gemstone from Tanzania (and, so far, only found in that country). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzanite

    ReplyDelete
  7. That is a co-incidence I love Tanzanite as well. A double co-incidence bearing mind I hadn't posted Shabby Girl's comment when GB wrote his!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Tsavorites the luscious green gemstone is part of the large Garnet family. The first gem was mined in Kenya in close proximity to the Tsavo national park

    ReplyDelete

Hello - thanks for dropping by to leave a comment. Your comments are much appreciated even if I don't always reply. They will appear as soon as they have been moderated.

Blog Archive