Tayrona Emeralds
Where the rare begins,
long before it shines.
We Begin at the Source
Tayrona Ventures builds the platforms the Group stands on. Tayrona Emeralds is the first of them.
It holds the gemstones and precious metals the Group’s Maisons draw on, from the emerald mines of the Eastern Andes to concessions across Africa and beyond. Wherever a stone rises, it is controlled and recorded from the ground onward under one standard. Tayrona Emeralds recovers, cuts and records each stone. The Maisons bring it to the world.
Held at the source. Carried to the world.
The Stones at Source
Seven stones, each drawn from mines the Group owns or concessions it holds, and carried to its Maisons without passing through another’s hands.
Origin known. Custody unbroken. Record kept.
Gachalá and Ubalá, Colombia
Emerald
The finest Colombian emeralds seem to hold light inside them. Their green is warm and deep, sometimes touched with blue, the colour of rainforest after rain. Each carries its own garden of inclusions, a landscape formed in the earth that no other stone repeats.
Colombia’s emeralds grew differently. Hot brines moved through the black shales of the Eastern Cordillera and formed crystals with little iron to dull their colour. Gachalá gave the world the 858‑carat Gachalá Emerald, found at the Vega de San Juan mine in 1967 and kept uncut at the Smithsonian.
The emeralds Tayrona brings to Qvinto come from Gachalá and Ubalá, owned, graded stone by stone and documented from the ground. In every Qvinto piece the emerald leads the design, a stone to be worn, admired and passed between generations.
Botswana and Angola
Diamond
A diamond does not hold light. It returns it. Cut to the right proportions, it sends back almost all the light that enters as brilliance and fire, and it is the hardest natural material on earth.
Diamonds formed deep in the earth’s mantle more than a billion years ago and rose to the surface through ancient volcanic pipes. Southern Africa holds some of the richest diamond ground in the world, and Botswana and Angola are among its great producers.
In Qvinto, diamonds frame the emerald and stand on their own. In Rudis Sylva, they bring light to the watch. Each is documented from the ground to the cutting bench.
Nigeria
Sapphire
Sapphire is the stone of royal rings and heirloom jewels, prized for a blue that holds steady in any light. After diamond it is the hardest gemstone, made to be worn every day and for a lifetime.
It is corundum, coloured by traces of iron and titanium. Nigeria’s sapphire fields on the Jos and Mambilla plateaus yield stones of deep, even blue, alongside rarer greens and golds.
Tayrona’s Nigerian sapphires travel under the Group’s own custody to the atelier, for Qvinto’s jewellery and for Rudis Sylva’s gem‑set watches.
Merelani Hills, Tanzania
Tanzanite
Tanzanite shows a different colour from every angle, a deep violet blue that turns towards purple and warms by candlelight. It was discovered in 1967, the same year Gachalá gave up its great emerald.
It is found in one place on earth, a few square kilometres of the Merelani Hills in northern Tanzania, below Kilimanjaro. A single source makes it one of the rarest gemstones in fine jewellery.
Secured at the source and held to the Group’s record, tanzanite gives Qvinto a blue from ground that cannot be replaced.
Gachalá, Colombia
Euclase
Euclase is a collector’s stone, seldom seen in jewellery at all. Its colour runs from pale sky to a deep, clear sea blue, with a brilliance unusual for a stone of its colour.
It forms in the same Colombian ground as the emerald, and the deep blue crystals of the emerald belt are among the finest known. A perfect cleavage makes it one of the most demanding stones to cut, which is why so few ever reach a jeweller.
Recovered at Gachalá alongside the emerald and documented from the same ground, euclase gives Qvinto a blue that very few jewellers in the world can offer.
Nigeria
Tourmaline
No gemstone comes in more colours than tourmaline. Pinks, reds, greens and blues, sometimes two or three in a single crystal, and in many stones the colour shifts as it turns in the light.
Its range comes from a complex chemistry that draws in iron, manganese, copper and other elements as the crystal grows. Nigeria is one of the world’s important sources, known for vivid pinks and greens and for rare copper‑bearing blues.
In Qvinto, tourmaline lets colour lead, answering the emerald’s green with a full palette. Each stone is documented from the Nigerian ground forward.
Nigeria
Aquamarine
Aquamarine has the colour of clear sea water, a cool, calm blue that brightens in daylight. It often forms in large crystals with very few inclusions, so the eye passes straight through the stone.
Like the emerald, it is a beryl. Where chromium turns emerald green, iron gives aquamarine its blue. Nigeria is known for aquamarine of strong, saturated colour, among the finest found today.
Set beside the emerald, its sister stone, aquamarine brings a lighter register to Qvinto’s collections. Each stone is documented from the Nigerian ground to the atelier.
Gachalá and Ubalá,the Eastern Andes.
Owned from the moment it leaves the earth.
The finest Colombian emeralds rise from the Gachalá and Ubalá mines of the Eastern Andes, where Tayrona Emeralds works the source upstream of the Maisons. Each stone is held rather than bought, controlled from the mine face to the sorting table, and recorded at every step. What reaches our Maisons carries its origin with it.
We do not buy the stone. We own it from the ground.
Víctor Quintero
The Patriarch of the Emeralds.
1930 · 2015
Víctor Quintero was born in Somondoco, Boyacá, in 1930, and went to work in the Chivor mine as a boy. He spent his life in the emerald country of the Eastern Andes and came to own five of the seven most important emerald mines in Colombia, among them Chivor and the ground that is now Tayrona Emeralds.
He was known across Boyacá as a man of dialogue and peace, and respected for keeping his word in a demanding trade. He died in 2015. His son, Wilson Quintero, carries the family’s work forward, and Tayrona Emeralds works that ground today with the Quintero family.
His name lives on in Qvinto.
His legacy, in every stone.
A record that travels
with every stone.
Every stone passes through the same five steps, and the record stays with it wherever it goes.
Source
A mine the Group owns, or a concession held under sovereign partnership with the host country.
Recovery
Extracted from the mine under our own control, never contracted out.
Sorting
Graded and selected stone by stone, against one standard.
Record
Documented provenance held at each step of the way.
To the Maisons
Only the finest are reserved for our Maisons, origin intact. The rest go to the trade.
The oldest stone,
the newest tools.
Emeralds have been mined in the Eastern Andes for nearly five centuries. Tayrona Emeralds is working with specialists to bring that work into a new era, investing in aerial and spectral mapping, laser grading and precision extraction, so that each stone is found with more care, recovered whole, and graded with a certainty the eye alone cannot give.
The tradition is old. The precision is new.
We secure the origin.We control the journey.We create the extraordinary.