silicates
Sugilite
KNa2Fe3+2(Li3Si12)O30
- Also known as
- royal lavuliteroyal azel
- Crystal system
- hexagonal
- Hardness
- 5.5–6.5 on the Mohs scale
- Lustre
- vitreous
- Colour
- Magenta to deep purple
- Where it forms
- In manganese ore bodies, and the gem material comes from the Wessels mine in the Kalahari manganese field.
- Chiefly from
- Wessels Mine, Northern Cape, South AfricaIwagi Islet, Japan
Why it is that colour
Manganese in the trivalent state. The colour is intense and unlike anything else.
Safety
Safe to handle.
Where it comes from
Effectively a single mine. Wessels is a working manganese mine and sugilite is a by-product; when the seam it comes from is not being worked, supply stops. Material has become markedly scarcer and more expensive since the 1990s.
Historical use
None before 1944, and none commercially before the 1980s.
Recorded as history and attributed where possible. That a stone was used for something establishes that people used it, not that it worked.
What is attributed to it, and since when
First described in 1944 from a Japanese occurrence, and named after the geologist Ken-ichi Sugi. Gem-quality purple material was only found in South Africa in 1975 and reached the market in the 1980s. All attached meanings are from that decade onward.
Described, not endorsed. Dating a claim is not the same as assessing it — but an association that first appears in a book published in 1985 is not an ancient inheritance, whatever the label says. A sincere account of feeling better is compatible with the stone doing nothing — see the placebo effect.
Worth knowing
Sugilite sits alongside charoite and tanzanite as a stone whose entire history is documented and recent. It was described in 1944, the gem material was found in 1975, it was marketed in the 1980s under several invented names — royal lavulite, royal azel — and it acquired a substantial metaphysical reputation almost immediately.
The invented trade names are worth noticing on their own. When a new material appears, the first thing that happens is that somebody tries to name it something that sounds established.
Identity checked against IMA-CNMNC master list, June 2025.