Rhodochrosite

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This is something we almost never see, Rhodochrosite from the ancient mines in Cornwall. It likely dates to the 1700s-1800s (and in fact has an old parchment label in German glued to the backside: "Himbeerspat!!- Cornwall, England"). Himbeerspat: Translates to "raspberry spar," a traditional nickname for deep, rich red varieties of rhodochrosite in old German collections. The piece is huge, compared to any other small example we have seen before. It features a rolling carpet of botryoidal, waxy-lustrous rhodo forming a near solid coverage of the display face, and is mostly pristine. Subtle detail abounds, in person. These only turn up in old collections, and often those themselves obtained these from old museum liquidations. An old specimen out of an old German collection, handled by Wolfgang Wendel in the early 2000s. We have only been able to find a few examples online, and in the British Museum holdings. We think it safe to assume that this must be one of the larger surviving examples. The name "Rhodochrosite" itself was coined in 1813 by the German geologist Johann Friedrich Ludwig Hausmann and it is not hard to imagine that this specimen of "Himbeerspat" predates the formal naming of the species!