Chrysocolla

$2,000.00

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This specimen from the Tenke-Fungurume area in the Kolwezi mining district, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is both beautiful visually and beautifully complex geologically. Comprising a gorgeous array of intense turquoise-blue bladed crystals rising up from a thin bed of matrix it is only when one realizes what these crystals are, or should I say "were" that the complexity arises. These are blades of Chrysocolla - an amorphous copper silicate - coated with an extremely fine layer of colourless Quartz microcrystals, but Chrysocolla does not form crystals, let alone freestanding bladed crystals. The Chrysocolla is a pseudomorph and epimorph - replacement and coating - of Malachite, but Malachite does not form bladed crystals like these either! So, the Malachite is also a pseudomorph, but probably after bladed Azurite, meaning that these are Quartz coating Chrysocolla epimorphs after Malachite pseudomorphs after Azurite. The individual 'blades' exceptionally reach 4 cm in length, but are mostly around 1.5 cm. Wonderfully complex and strikingly beautiful.