Madagascar Gemstones

Madagascar produces a wide selection of the best gemstones available on the market today. It has become famous for the natural blue sapphires from the Fort Dauphin area in the far south of Madagascar. Before the first rush for these fine quality, natural and untreated blue sapphires Madagascar was known to produce tourmaline in many varieties such as rubellite, bi-color tourmaline, indicolite, pink tourmaline, blue tourmaline and huge slices of liddicoatite. Fine emeralds, aquamarine, morganite and even rare newly found Beryls like pezzottaite are found in Madagascar. Zircons, all kind of garnets like tsavorite, malaya, color change garnet, spessartite and demantoid are also mined in the geological treasure island Madagascar.
Then the famous ilakaka sapphire deposit has been discovered and suddenly a very wide range of gemstones were available from Madagascar. Natural pink sapphires, blue sapphires, yellow sapphires, purple sapphires and violet sapphires as well as fantastic padparadscha sapphires. Alexandrites, cat’s eyes, blue spinel, violet spinel and other rare stones like taafeite, jevenejevites are found in Ilakaka as well as some scare quality diamonds.
Of course Madagascar produces also a huge quantity of fine and natural rubies! The ruby from Vatomandry is the most famous because of its vivid pure red color which is called pigeons blood. A very fine ruby is found also in Andilamena area in the central part of Madagascar. I have seen fine, eyeclean red rubies with rough sizes of 27,5ct which has been cut into an exceptional, loupe clean oval stone of 16,18ct.
Of course the best Madagascar rubies can compete with all Burma ruby and the new ruby from Mozambique.
Until now only tanzanites, peridots and good quality diamonds are not mined in Madagascar but I’m sure that the future hides some fantastic surprises for the gemworld.