Judging quality
Look for a sharp, mobile chatoyant band and rich honey color. Dyed red and blue-green tiger's eye is common and obvious against the natural gold, brown and slate-blue range.
Quartz
Tiger's Eye
Quartz that replaced fibrous crocidolite, inheriting its parallel structure and producing a rolling band of light called chatoyancy. Blue hawk's eye is the unoxidised form.
Care
Durable. Soap and water; color is stable in natural material.
History & lore
The Northern Cape's Doornrivier deposits have supplied most of the world's tiger's eye for over a century.
Cultural history, recorded as tradition rather than as medical or scientific claim.
Common questions about Tiger's Eye
- What is Tiger's Eye?
- Quartz that replaced fibrous crocidolite, inheriting its parallel structure and producing a rolling band of light called chatoyancy. Blue hawk's eye is the unoxidised form.
- How hard is Tiger's Eye and what is it made of?
- Tiger's Eye is a Quartz-family mineral with the composition SiO2 with crocidolite. It crystallizes in the trigonal system and rates 6.5-7 on the Mohs hardness scale. It occurs in gold, brown, blue.
- Where does Tiger's Eye come from?
- Notable localities for Tiger's Eye include South Africa (Northern Cape), Australia, Namibia.
- How do you tell good Tiger's Eye from filler?
- Look for a sharp, mobile chatoyant band and rich honey color. Dyed red and blue-green tiger's eye is common and obvious against the natural gold, brown and slate-blue range.
- How do you care for Tiger's Eye?
- Durable. Soap and water; color is stable in natural material.
See it in person
Photographs only go so far
Both rooms are open six days a week, and there is always someone happy to pull pieces out of the case so you can compare them under the light.