Kenyan Tsavorite — Untreated
ENCYCLOPEDIA · SKYJEMS
Kenyan Tsavorite — Untreated
- Key concepts
- kenyan tsavorite, tsavorite garnet, green grossular, untreated tsavorite, tsavo
Tsavorite is green grossular garnet, and it is one of the few genuinely modern discoveries in a trade that mostly deals in stones known for millennia. It was found in the late 1960s in the bush near the Kenya–Tanzania border, and named for Tsavo, the national park it was found beside.
Why it is worth knowing about
The obvious comparison is emerald, and tsavorite wins several of the arguments. It is a brighter, more refractive stone. It is typically far cleaner — a fine tsavorite is often eye-clean where a fine emerald almost never is. And it needs no treatment, where emerald is very nearly always oiled.
What it does not have is size. Tsavorite crystals are small, and the material becomes disproportionately scarce above two or three carats. That, rather than colour, is what sets the price.
Treatment
Garnet is not routinely treated, and tsavorite in particular has no accepted enhancement. Ours is untreated, which for this species is the ordinary condition rather than a distinction — the useful thing to know is that with tsavorite there is no treatment question hanging over the purchase.
Reading the lab report
A report on tsavorite states species = garnet, variety = grossular, and records no treatment. Origin determination on garnet is less routine than on corundum, so we lead with the documented species and weight. GIA is the laboratory we lead with, and where a stone carries a GIA report we list its number on the product page.
What to look at
(1) colour — the finest is a saturated grass green with a hint of blue rather than yellow; (2) clarity, which should be eye-clean; (3) size, since this is where scarcity bites; (4) cut, which should hold brightness rather than going dark at the centre; (5) that the green reads well in ordinary indoor light, not just under a lamp.
Skyjems inventory snapshot
Browse garnet at /collections/garnet. Skyjems' selection changes as stones are added or sold; review each current listing for its own documentation.
Private viewings
Contact Skyjems at +1-416-366-3335 or visit Skyjems' private-viewing page.