Elbaite with Lepidolite Tourmaline

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Presenting the remarkable pink and red colour found in about 2018 in one pegmatite pocket at Coronel Murta in Minas Gerais state, Brazil this miniature Elbaite specimen is really eye-catching. Dominated by a 5.2 cm long prismatic crystal, a second, much shorter but more intensely coloured crystal branches off from the base of the first. The main crystal displays a stunning, perfect, glassy, flat-topped, pinacoid termination but further down its prism are linear marks (not the parallel vertical growth-lines typical of tourmaline) and a larger missing section from where it grew alongside other crystals. Despite these imperfections its colour is excellent, grading from a rich strawberry-pink for most of its length, up to a slightly paler zone beneath its sudden, striking, intense raspberry-red tip. The short (1.8 cm long), second Elbaite crystal, is mostly a fine raspberry-red colour, glassy, and with a superb, sloping tourmaline-style termination. A cluster of pale lilac-grey Lepidolite crystals surround and conceal the contact between the two tourmaline crystals. It has no reported repairs, but the imperfections to parts of the main crystal have significantly reduced the price on this one, which would otherwise be in the several thousands.