Descloizite - image 1

Descloizite

Unknown Owner
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The Berg Aukas Mine of Namibia has produced the world's finest descloizite specimens and this is an excellent, complete all-around and pristine example. This fine piece consists of a large, robust, lustrous, and translucent, descloizite blade projecting upward from a base of smaller crystals. The large crystal looks just like a chiseled spear-point or arrowhead. The smaller crystals at the base have textbook-form crystals and look like intergrown, branching spear-points. This fine piece is a highly representative example of the species and locality, which closed in 1978. Ex. Rob Smith Collection.

Product details

SpeciesDescloizite
SizeMiniature
Dimensions3.9 x 1.9 x 1.6 cm
Added on10/23/2024
LocalityNamibia, Otjozondjupa Region, Berg Aukas Mine

Known provenance

DateCollectorAcquisition price
08/2024Unknown OwnerNot disclosed
—The ArkenstoneNot disclosed

Learn more

Descloizite
Mineral guide
Learn about Descloizite
lead-zinc vanadate with lustrous rosettes, black-to-brown tones, and warm translucence; top localities Otavi, Namibia and Ojuela, Mexico.
Descloizite
Regional guide
Descloizite from Berg Aukas Mine, Namibia
Berg Aukas descloizite is one of the great “species-defining” classics: the locality by which serious collectors judge descloizite. The best pieces have a sculptural, almost architectural presence—dark brown to nearly black spear-point crystals, glossy blades, jackstraw bundles, radiating rosettes, and sharply terminated clusters that can look metallic under a show lamp yet glow warm reddish brown along thinner edges. Many specimens sit in pleasing contrast on pale calcite, dolomite, smithsonite, or willemite-bearing matrix, giving the dark vanadate crystals the visual authority of black lacquer against limestone.