Sunday, January 10, 2010

Does Tanzanite Come In Other Colors?

As promised yesterday, I am doing a post on colors of Tanzanite. You are probably wondering what made me think of such a thing. Well a couple of things, actually. If you know Tanzanite, then you know it does not come out of the ground that lovely purple/blue color. It comes out green, or brown, and then is heat treated to the desired color. Like all treated gems, some take to the darker, more sought after color than others do. I have actually seen green Tanzanite, because I owned some. That is its actual natural color. I sold it for a very good profit, from what I spent on it. I wish I had kept it now. They were very small stones. So the other day I was watching gemstones, on JTV, and they very quickly mentioned something about pink Tanzanite. Now I was not actually paying attention, but did go to their website to see if they had such a thing. No, they did not, nor did they have pink Zoisite which is the proper name since only the blue/purple variety can actually be called Tanzanite. So I did some searching online, to see if there was such a thing as pink, or yellow Zoisite. I did find a website selling such material. You can view the pieces they have here. I am not promoting their site, but since I do not have any samples of my own, I wanted my readers to see what these lovely varieties of Zoisite look like. What ultimately peaked my interest was a parcel of gemstones I recently purchased. I have been trying to learn to identify my stones that are bought in parcels, and unidentified. I have a round pale yellow stone, that is trichroic in nature. So of course I wanted to know what it is. There are only a few trichroic yellow gemstones: chrysoberyl, spodumene, and topaz, plus a tanzanite of course would be as well. Any of the stones mentioned would have very good value, with the exception of maybe spodumene, which would basically make it a yellow kunzite, which is not at all the sought after color. Whatever it is, it is a most interesting gemstone, and I can not wait until I can investigate it with a refractometer. By the way pink zoisite in cabochon form is know as Thulite, and zoisite in green cabochon form is known as antolite, put together they make ruby in zoisite.

1 comment:

tanz said...

Tanzanite in any other colour save for brilliant violetish-blue somehow isn't Tanzanite. This relatively newcomer has quickly garnered the coveted position next to diamond as a must have. This is partially due to its scarcity and imminent depletion which has caused the value to soar manifold. In October 2002, the American Gem Trade Assoc further elevated its position by adopting Tanzanite as a December birthstone. It is indeed an honour as the last time the birthstone list was revised was in 1912. http://www.tanzanite-engagement-rings.org/tanzanite-jewelry

Contact Email