Chrysocolla

$7,000.00

$40.00 shipping
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This strikingly beautiful cabinet display specimen from the Tenke-Fungurume area in the Kolwezi mining district, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is for those who want an interesting story to compliment their specimen. Comprising a wonderfully attractive array of upstanding pale blue bladed crystals one might be forgiven for trying to work out what this amazingly well-crystallized blue mineral is. Well, its colour is from an amorphous copper silicate - Chrysocolla - but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Or, should I say Quartz is the tip of the iceberg, as the Chrysocolla is enclosed in a thin layer of colourless Quartz crystals, protecting it from damage. Looking underneath the specimen one can see that it is made up of pale blue Chrysocolla, but that it is encapsulating, or epimorphing, a large number of thin dark green blades of Malachite. These thin Malachite blades are themselves clearly replacing, or pseudomorphing, an earlier phase which is most likely Azurite. Damage free, and remarkable in colour, this specimen is wonderfully complex and strikingly beautiful.