Malaya Garnet

Item Description

Here we have a lovely Malaya Garnet gem from Tanzania. The name "Malaya" has been assigned to these specific stones which are a mixture of different species i.e., Grossular, Spessartine, Almandine, Pyrope and Andradite. As far as I know, Tanzania is the only country to produce these gems. This combination of species essentially has created a new kind of Garnet stone that carries certain elements from various species. The word "Malaya" comes from Swahili and literally means "out of the family", and was used to describe these Garnets because they had no distinct chemical purity. When these gems were first found in the 1960s they were thought to be Spessartine. After extensive testing they were found to be not Spessartine, not Grossular nor Pyrope but somewhere in between. This gem, like many from this area is a combination of two or more species (my guess would be Grossular and Spessartine but it's hard to say without analysis). The color in this gem is reminiscent of other Garnets that I've seen from Tanzania with a beautiful saturated orange hue. The stone is virtually eye clean and has a very attractive "Pear Brilliant" cut. A very lively gem from one of the most active gem producing countries in the world. This material is becoming rarer on the market, as the dried up river beds that produce these gems have been harvested again and again, each time producing less and less material.