More than a century ago, a passion for pink held by a powerful Chinese empress helped transform a remote corner of Southern California into one of the world’s most important sources of tourmaline. The unlikely connection between Empress Dowager Cixi, Tiffany & Co. and San Diego County’s gemstone mines makes October’s birthstone even more fascinating.
Cixi, who ruled China during the final decades of the Qing dynasty, was famously enamored with pink and pink tourmaline. Her enthusiasm created enormous demand at the Chinese Imperial Court, sending miners in San Diego County scrambling to uncover more of the rosy gem.
Between 1902 and 1910, approximately 120 tons of gem-quality pink tourmaline from San Diego County were shipped to China, according to the San Diego Natural History Museum. The Himalaya Mine in the Mesa Grande district was among the major producers, while other famous local deposits included the Tourmaline Queen, Tourmaline King, Stewart and Pala Chief mines.
Tiffany & Co. played an important role in connecting the California mines with the imperial court. Tiffany gemologist J.L. Tannenbaum commissioned Southern California miners to fulfill orders for the Chinese market. Once the tourmaline arrived in China, craftsmen carved the material into snuff bottles, decorative objects and jewelry.
Cixi died in 1908, and the Qing dynasty fell in 1912. With the loss of the imperial market, San Diego County’s tourmaline boom quickly faded. Yet the region continued to produce spectacular material, including a remarkable pocket at the Pala Stewart Mine in 1969 that yielded about a ton of hot-pink tourmaline.
The story is an extraordinary chapter in the history of a gemstone that seems almost designed to capture attention. Tourmaline has been an official October birthstone since 1952, when the National Association of Jewelers (now Jewelers of America) updated a list that hadn't changed since it was originated in 1912. Opal is October’s other official birthstone.
The name tourmaline comes from the Sinhalese words tura mali, meaning “stone with mixed colors.” Few gems live up to that description more dramatically. Tourmaline occurs in shades ranging from pink, red, peach and orange to green, blue, yellow, brown, purple and black. It can also display multiple colors within a single crystal, producing spectacular bi-color and tri-color gems.
Those colors are largely determined by trace elements incorporated into the tourmaline’s chemical structure. Lithium-rich varieties can produce blue, green, red, yellow and pink hues, while iron-rich tourmaline tends to be black or bluish-black. Different combinations of elements and crystal chemistry create the remarkable palette that makes the gem so distinctive.
Tourmaline is also durable enough for everyday jewelry, measuring 7 to 7.5 on the Mohs scale of hardness. Today, important deposits are found in Brazil, Afghanistan, Madagascar, East Africa and elsewhere, while San Diego County remains celebrated for its historic gem-bearing pegmatites.
Credits: Tourmaline image by Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Image of Empress Dowager Cixi (cropped) by John Yu Shuinling, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
