Updated 3d ago

Lepidolite

$7,500.00

$40.00 shipping
Seller offers an extended return window of up to 30 days
Ships from USA

The aesthetic balance of this colourful Brazilian Elbaite tourmaline from the modern discoveries at Coronel Murta, in the Jequitinhonha Valley, Minas Gerais state is really top notch. With an 'island' or 'cloud' of clustered rosettes and aggregated pearlescent platy lilac Lepidolite crystals and intergrown small Quartz crystals, two very prominent colour-zoned, transparent to translucent, flat-topped, pinacoid terminated prismatic Elbaite crystals rise upwards from separate parts of the surface. These crystals are beautiful and their terminations undamaged and perfectly formed and there are no reported repairs, but I will put on record here that I would not be at all surprised if both Elbaite crystals have been reattached at their base and the larger of the two crystals is slightly chipped down its side where it continues downwards through the Lepidolite matrix, but this is not seen from the front display direction. Despite this, the appearance of these crystals is superb, showing one of the famous colour-zoned sequences for which this pegmatite is so loved - a main strawberry orange-pink body colour, passing upwards into a short teal-blue band just beneath a thin intense raspberry-pink flat termination face. The larger of the two crystals reaches 6.5 cm in its full length down through the matrix, and 3.2 cm tall above the surface. The second crystal is 1.8 cm in length. With directional lighting these colours are magnificent and the whole small cabinet-sized display piece looks stunning.