Fluorite on Smoky Quartz

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This remarkable specimen presents an intriguing combination of gemmy, classic, Alpine Smoky Quartz, but partially coated with pale purple cubes of Fluorite with rounded edges. Labelled somewhat tentatively as from Chamonix in the Haute-Savoie region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France, it is certainly not a form that I am familiar with. At 9.9 cm tall, the stocky pyramidally terminated Smoky Quartz crystal is lovely in itself, with naturally re-healed fractured base showing wispy milky cloudy inclusions, which disperse upwards into a gemmy transparent glassy upper prism and termination. Its termination is staggered, or stepped, with multiple smaller terminations just to one side of its summit. The Fluorite crystals, which are not the usual rare pink colour of Alpine-Fluorite from Chamonix, are concentrated along three sides of the Quartz prism with the larger crystals (to 9 mm on edge) on just two sides. A fascinating and unusual Alpine Quartz which displays nicely and shows only the very slightest of damage.