Tourmaline

The Jonas Mine discovery of 1978 shocked the world. There are literally books and articles on this find, so we will not go into it in depth, except to say that the painting shown (credit to Wendell Wilson) accurately depicts the largest and most valuable walk-in pocket of tourmaline known to have survived to be discovered by humans. This pocket stayed intact for hundreds of millions of years, literally, without collapse. It was sketched as you see it here, before the specimens were professionally collected. For more on this find, we will refer you to sources. This piece, lost for over 50 years into a private European collection, is one of the lost treasures of that find never shown to the public before. Since it came back to light, we have seen it published as the cover of Rock & Gem magazine, and as a featured piece in the book Ikons of the Mineral World: Nature's Finest Art. It miraculously is a floater, with no repairs nor any restorations. It was found as you see it here, surprisingly sitting as a "floater" cluster atop the large single crystal in the painting. Hence the nickname "tiara" as it literally sat like a crown atop. Nothing like this has been found before, or since. If you look at the painting/sketch, you can see this is the largest contiguous cluster of connected tourmalines of the gracile, gemmy style. Crystals are in one of two styles, robust or gracile, as you can clearly see. Most specimens with crystals like this formed as small masses, and certainly there are no other floating clusters of this size and quality. It is our honor to post this older find, brought to the light of modern days.