Found in 1967. Named after a country.
Sixty years ago nobody had seen this blue. Here is how a stone that exists in one place became one of the most wanted gems in the world.
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1967
A blue crystal in the Merelani Hills
On the dry slopes below Mount Kilimanjaro, Maasai herders come across transparent crystals of an intense blue lying on the ground. The find is registered by the prospector Manuel de Souza, who first believes he has struck sapphire. The stone turns out to be zoisite, a mineral known for a century — but never in this colour.
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The legend
Fire on the hills
Local accounts say a lightning strike set the grassland alight, and the heat turned the dull brown crystals on the hillside a deep blue. The story matches the mineralogy: gentle heat is exactly what brings the blue out of the rough, and it is still how most tanzanite is finished today.
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1968
Tiffany gives it a name
Tiffany & Co. takes the stone to market, decides that "blue zoisite" is impossible to sell, and names it tanzanite after the only country it comes from. The campaign runs on a single line: it can be found in two places on earth — Tanzania, and Tiffany's.
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2002
A birthstone, at last
Tanzanite is added to the official December birthstones, the first addition in almost a century. Demand moves from collectors to jewellery buyers worldwide, and prices for fine blue material start to climb.
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Today
One strip of ground, running out
Mining continues in a handful of licensed blocks, deeper each year, worked by both large operations and thousands of small-scale miners. Tanzania now restricts the export of rough so that stones are cut in the country. When this strip is finished, there is nowhere else to go.