Tsavorite Garnet (pair)

Item Description

Tsavorite Garnet (sometimes specimen Tsavolite) is the green vanadium and/or chromium bearing variety of Grossular, first found in the Tsavo Region of Southern Kenya by Campbell Bridges in 1971. The gem was obviously named in honor of this area. One of the best aspects of Tsavorite as a faceted stone is that the material is singly refractive, which means that the material is not restricted due to pleochroism when the rough has to be oriented for cutting. This allows a gem cutter to retain a greater yield for faceted stones, which is a notable advantage over other gems which are doubly refractive, and have to be oriented in certain direction to yield the best color, which can result in a smaller end result. Richard Hughes states on his website ruby-sapphire.com, "If the definition of a gem is a stone that combines beauty, durability and rarity, tsavorite is near perfect." Here we have a wonderful pair of "Rectangle" cut Tsavorites with excellent green color (not too light, not too dark) and VERY slight inclusions. The stones are not a perfectly matched pair as one of them is a more shallow cut than the other. Still a wonderful pair for a collector or these stones could be set into jewelry to create a beautiful custom piece. For reference, this past year in Tucson, we saw top Tsavorite gems retailing for over $5,000 per carat, though they were of a larger size than this set.