Tiger's Eye

I have been busy busy here in the studio creating lots of beautiful designs, I had some customers in the other day looking into creating a bespoke pendant and brought to me some lovely carnelian and a beautiful tigers eye so I wanted to share some more information about tigers eye with you all.

Tiger’s eye is a semi precious gemstone and is commonly found in the popular in yellow and golden brown types with the most famous stripes and has a beautiful lustre once polished.

Tigers eye goes through many changes in the ground before it becomes this beautiful stone, this gemstone starts off by being a blue mineral named Crocidolite which consist of Iron an sodium. This crocidolite is formally know to us a asbestos. Quartz is transformed into tiger’s eye when it becomes imbedded into the fibres and crocidolite this process results into one of two gemstones, a blue stone called hawks eye or the golden stone named tiger’s eye. During this process the asbestos is dissolved completely.

The quartz then takes on the fibrous formation and the blue in colour of the crocidolilte. This is what creates the very beautiful lines noticed in this gem which gives it its play of light and constant interest in the stone, which the stone is so sort for.

The tigers eye can be found with may variants from the rare inclusions of goethite and or hematite found within the stone, this will still be the traditional colour with flecks of black and hematite and white quartz streaks running through the stone.

In Australia they have a stone which is named as Tigers iron, this will be similar to the rich golden colour of that found within the mines of south Africa, the difference with this stone mined in Australia will be that there will be a mixture of red jasper evident within the stone.

Another variety is named as Pietersite, the look is very different from that as a tigers eye. The deposits found within this stone are commonly broken into smaller fragments which is then re cemented but the silica. Due to the setting of these fragments the positioning of the deposit tend to be more of a patchy style with shade of blue yellow brown and red. This type was commonly found in Namibia however recently have also been found in places such as china. Tigers eye from China will be similar to that of Namibia but will display a more red golden brown in colour.

The majority of tigers eye is commonly found in the areas of Namibia, China, California Arizona, Sri Lanka, India, and Brazil.