Chrysocolla

This pretty, smaller cabinet-sized display specimen of Quartz-coated Chrysocolla is not only attractive in its colour and sparkle, but has an interesting geochemical back story going on. From new finds in the Tenke-Fungurume area in the Kolwezi mining district, DR Congo, the complexity of how this type of mineralization came about is staggering and requires a forensic approach. This Quartz-Chrysocolla shows the final stages of this process. Sparkling and glistening, almost the whole piece is encrusted in tiny, colourless, doubly-terminated Quartz crystals through which the colour of the underlying Chrysocolla is seen. The unusual bladed shapes seen across the surface represent earlier copper carbonate mineralization - the blades being the outline shape of thin Azurite crystals, long-gone, replaced, or pseudomorphed originally by Malachite but then a shift to silica-rich solutions converted them (pseudomorphed again!) to copper silicate (Chrysocolla). A continued influx of excess silica then overwhelmed the copper, producing the pure Quartz crystals on top of everything before it. The longest bladed crystal reaches 3.3 cm in length. Fascinating and beautiful in equal measure.