Updated 3d ago

Stephanite

$7,500.00

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This wonderful historic miniature specimen presents an unusual and fascinating combination of silver sulphosalt species presented as artistic growths upon a thin bed of white Quartz crystals. The unusual aspect of this assemblage is that the Stephanite as a dark steely-grey metallic hexagonal platy phase forms hundreds of small scale-like crystals coating the surface of larger (to 1.2 cm in length) prismatic crystals of Pyrargyrite which are very deep purple with reddish internal reflections. These sulphosalts form an aggregate some 3.5 x 2.8 cm in extent which despite its undoubted age remains in excellent condition. It is from the famous historic Himmelsfürst silver mine near to Freiberg in Saxony, a mine which opened in the 16th century and continued producing silver intermittently for five centuries. It is from the superb systematic collection assembled by the brothers Martin and Michael Günther (1951-2007 & 1956-2021) and is mounted for display on a small acryllic display cube but can easily be removed. Specimens of this quality are rare, even for 'Freiberg' but to have fine precise provenance is superb. It should also be noted that the Freiberg area is the Type Locality for Stephanite - where it was first described to science.