Posted on: August 16th, 2009 Tsavorite

Tsavorite is a young gemstone from Garnet family with a very long history, which was discovered by Campbell R. Bridges in 1967. This Scottish-born geologist was looking for gemstones in north-east of Tanzania, near the famous Tsavo national park where is the habitat of snakes & lions, when he discovered a potato-like object with beautiful green grains.

The newly discovered gemstone had extraordinarily beautiful vivid green colour, great transparency & excellent brilliance. Campbell bridges started looking for Tsavorite deposits in Kenya and to protect himself from wild animals he began by living in a tree-house and He used a python to stand guard over his cache of coloured gems. In 1974, Tiffany & Co introduced Tsavorite in USA and then to International markets.

Unfortunately, Campbell Bridges was killed by a group of people armed with arrows, spears and machetes last week near Tsavo National Park, in an apparent dispute over mining rights in southeast Kenya.

Why Tsavorite is so desirable? First of all, it is for its vivid, radiant green which is more consistent in colour than Emerald. Secondly, Tsavorite is valuable because of its great brilliance that is far more than Emerald.

This gemstone, unlike Emerald, does not need any oil treatment. Compared to Emerald, Tsavorite is less likely to crack or break and therefore is more wearable. It also has a relatively more reasonable price.

Rough Tsavorites follow one of these two routs depending on their size: Small rough goes to cut in Thiland, India and Sri Lanka but large fine rough goes to German cutting centres in Idar-Oberstein. Tsavorites over 3 carats are rare & very valuable.

Tsavorites we have used in our Golbarg collection were sourced from Idar-Oberstein in Germany and are from excellent colour, cut, clarity and lustre. They were matched and cut specially for Toranj London.

Regards,
Faraz Dalaee

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