Heavy Tatar Tanzanite

Old English hefig, weighty — cognate with heave. Used as a color modifier since at least the seventeenth century to indicate weight in saturation as much as value: heavy with pigment, heavy-bodied. In the engine's adjective grid, heavy sits alongside deep and plush in the dark-and-saturated quadrant. Closer to a fabric description than a pure value word.

Mongolian Tatar, Tatar. As a color modifier, tatar implies a Kazan-and-Crimean-Khanate quality, the visual register of Tatar-Khanate-of-Kazan-and-Crimea Mongol-successor Central-Asian-and-Eastern-European hand-built Khanate-and-trading-city surfaces under Kazan-and-Crimean Tatar-Khanate post-Mongol-successor trading-and-fortress light. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to mongol and hun in usage.

A blue-violet variety of zoisite — discovered in 1967 in a single small area of northern Tanzania near Mount Kilimanjaro and marketed by Tiffany & Co. shortly after. The color refers to a faceted tanzanite cut to maximize its strong pleochroism: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted deep blue-purple with the gem's signature internal life. Cooler than amethyst, warmer than iolite, with the gem-trade specificity of a stone that occurs in exactly one place on Earth.