TANZANITE | How The Only 'Blue Gem' In The World Was Found In Tanzania

Have you heard of the Tanzania gems? They are called Tanzanite.

Tanzanite is the blue and violet variety of the mineral zoisite, caused by small amounts of vanadium.

It belongs to the epidote mineral group. Tanzanite is only found in Tanzania, in a very small mining area near the Mererani Hills.

The gemstone was given the name ‘tanzanite’ by Tiffany & Co. after Tanzania, the country in which it was discovered.

The scientific name of “blue-violet zoisite” was not thought to be sufficiently consumer-friendly by Tiffany’s marketing department, who introduced it to the market in 1968.

Intriguingly, tanzanite is a trichroic gemstone, which means that it displays three different colours when viewed from different angles. Florence describes how “the Namunyak Tanzanite was royal velvet blue when viewed from the top, deep purple from the side and pink-red from the other side”

In 2002, the American Gem Trade Association chose tanzanite as a December birthstone, the first change to their birthstone list since 1912.

From 1967, an estimated two million carats of tanzanite were mined in Tanzania before the mines were nationalized by the Tanzanian government in 1971.

The biggest tanzanite ever discovered was a 16,839-carat rough. Weighing more than 3.2kg, it was mined in 2005 by TanzaniteOne and named Mawenzi after Mount Kilimanjaro’s second-highest peak.

However, London-based designer Kat Florence believes she has worked with one of the most beautiful tanzanites in the world:

“At the time, the 563-carat Namunyak tanzanite was the largest flawless Royal Velvet Blue ever discovered. I recut the stone to 423.56 carats, set it into a necklace, and sold it at auction, donating the proceeds to build a school in Nepal.”

Tanzanites are often referred to as the “gemstone of a generation” because this generation is likely to be the only ones able to buy from the “first flush”, or primary deposit, of gemstones unearthed in Tanzania.

It is believed that the mines will be depleted in around 25 years, which means it is becoming increasingly difficult to find large tanzanites in the most coveted deep-blue colour.