Found in 1967. Named after a park.
A green garnet brighter than most emerald, found twice in two countries by the same man, and sold under a name invented in New York.
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1967
A green garnet in Tanzania
The Scottish geologist Campbell R. Bridges finds transparent green crystals in the hills of north-east Tanzania. They are grossular garnet, coloured by vanadium and chromium — the same elements that colour emerald, in a mineral nobody expected to see this green. Tanzania declines to grant him a mining licence.
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1971
Across the border, into Tsavo
Bridges follows the same geological belt south-east across the frontier into Kenya and finds it again, in the Taita hills near Tsavo National Park. This time he is granted a licence, and the first commercial production begins.
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1974
Tiffany gives it a name
Henry Platt of Tiffany & Co. launches the stone in the United States and calls it tsavorite, after the park beside the deposit. It is the same man, and the same playbook, that had named tanzanite six years earlier.
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Always
Nothing is done to it
Tsavorite reaches the market exactly as it came out of the ground: no heat, no oil, no resin. Emerald is oiled almost as a rule, and the difference is not cosmetic — an untreated stone cannot lose its appearance later because a filler dried out or a cleaning went wrong.
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Above 2 ct
Where it stops being available
The rough breaks small. The overwhelming majority of what is recovered finishes under one carat, fine stones over two carats are scarce, and over three carats they are traded individually rather than by parcel. This is the point where the price per carat stops rising gently and starts stepping.
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Today
Two countries, one belt
Production continues in Kenya around Taita and in northern Tanzania, where tsavorite comes out of the Merelani workings alongside tanzanite — the same hills, the same miners, a different mineral in the same rock.