Tsavorite - Green Garnet
Tsavorite is also known as the green garnet due to the very vibrant character to it, learn why it's a perfect alternative to the emerald.
The Tsavorite is also known as the green garnet due to the very vibrant character to it, displayed the vivid rich colour shown. The beauty about this stone is that it has reflections similar to the emerald, with the same hardness of garnet which makes the Tsavorite a perfect alternative to the emerald.
This Gemstone was discovered in the east of Africa back in the 1968, this was the biggest gemstone found within this time and was said to turn around the jewellery industry alongside the other discoveries made. The Tsavorite was found in Tanzania initially, during a few years not only was this newly mined stone found in Tanzania, traces were also found in places along the Kenyan border in the Taita Taveta district back in 1971. The stone was mined in the more grassy areas with bare dry hills alongside this border. This particular land where the first traces of this gemstones were found was once hundreds and millions of years ago was completely covered by the ocean. Within this time there were many layers of sediment which were distributed which formed shale. Once this had formed the land was then exposed to a very high heat and pressure which allowed this to change the oceans floor into many new minerals. This large development over this period of time gave birth to the huge variety of minerals east Africa produce to date.
It was only after three years the name for this gemstone was given, the name Tsavorite came from the famous Tsavo national park preserve in Kenya by Tiffany and co in New York who was one of the first to introduce this gemstone into the worlds jeweller market. The particular finding of the Tsavorite opened up new discoveries of many other gemstones during this time which were found in minerals which were being used at the time, these included the rich raspberry rhodolite garnet, the Malaya garnet and the velvety blue tanzanite.
Alongside the Green Garnet (Tsavorite) there are many other variations of the green garnet within the jewellery industry for example Demantoid and Uvaravite, however tsavorite is the most famously known within the gem trade to date.
When choosing a Tsavourite, the colour of each particular stone will be one of the main factors to consider, the most valuable colour this gemstone will display will be the rich vivid mid green in colour similar to the colour you see an emerald in. This stone is graded in the type 2 class by the GIA which is considered in this group for gemstones to be naturally included so any Tsavourite you choose will have traces of inclusions found, due to the nature of this stone and the brilliance in its colour it is not essential that the stone is loupe clean.
When sourcing a Tsavorite, its very rare that we would find a stone any larger than approximately 5cts these wouldn’t always been facetted stones, the facetted stones do tend to be cut the largest at 2cts. When mining this gemstone the majority of them are small uncut stones and not ideal to cut into a facetted gemstone. It has been discovered that over 40 areas have traceability of Tsavorite however only around four of them are fully operational mines producing this stone. On average it takes around 1 ton of bearing rock to extract under 5cts of fine 1ct pieces. If any stone is ground over the 3cts mark they are usually very fine in quality and are a very valuable stone.