Unlike diamonds, tourmaline is a gem that for long periods of time was used for things other than adornment. Indeed, tourmaline endeared itself to scientists long before it did jewelers.

Greek mineralogist Theophrastus was the first to make note of its electrical charge in 315 BC. From then on, this unique property was the subject of continual inquiry. In 1761, Benjamin Franklin published a paper on experiments that he had been requested to conduct on this gem. No doubt, he had heard that Europeans commonly used pieces of tourmaline as dirt-magnets to clean ashes from their pipes. He may have also known that Viking navigators had used slabs of tourmaline as polarizing filters to see through clouds and haze.

Oddly, tourmaline wasn’t widely used for jewelry until the mid-1600s when massive quantities of it were first shipped to Europe from Brazil and Sri Lanka. And even then, it wasn’t sold as tourmaline per se, but, instead, mixed in with diamonds and the many other gems that it resembled.

Finally, in 1707, the gem was given its own name, taken from the Sinhalese word “turmali,” which means, fittingly, mixture. The name acknowledges the gem’s broad color range (there are nearly 100 documented hues) and the fact that it had long served as a kind of chameleon stone—being sold as what it looked like rather than what it was.

Once tourmaline developed a name for itself, it became a jewelry staple. In 1777, Gustav III of Sweden gave Catherine II of Russia a 255-carat rubellite pendant. Rubellite is the name for a reddish and purple-red tourmaline which, at its best, is a ruby stand-in.

For about a century, tourmaline was mostly identified with America. In 1820, apple-green tourmaline from Maine became the first gem mined in America by its European settlers. By 1890, Tiffany’s had become the leading buyer of the state’s production. And when purple-green bi-colored tourmaline was discovered in California’s San Diego County later in the decade, the New York jewelry giant headed West for pieces of the action.

So did buyers from China whose empress, Tzu His, became a tourmaline addict. Between 1902 and 1911 she bought more than one ton of California tourmaline. When she died, and Chinese buying stopped, the local market suffered a terrible crash.

Today, northern California still produces bi-colored, as well as pink and green, tourmaline. But since the 1960s, Brazil has been the leading source—in terms of both quantity and quality. Its deep aqua-blue variety called indicolite (as in “indigo”) is rare and long coveted by collectors. Spectacular ‘neon’ blue and bluish-green material found in Paraiba in 1989 quickly set price records for tourmaline that are not likely to be broken any time soon.

When discussing tourmaline, mention must be made of Africa. Emerald-green tourmaline, colored by chromium, that is found in Tanzania has become one of the most desirable varieties of this gem. Nigerian rubellite has attracted a wide following. Most recently, yellow-greenish material from Malawi has been getting considerable attention.