Azurite on Malachite ps. Azurite - image 1

Azurite on Malachite ps. Azurite - image 2

Azurite on Malachite ps. Azurite - image 3

Azurite on Malachite ps. Azurite

Unknown Owner

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With a Milpillas azurite, although there are many many styles that came out in the heyday here for about a decade from the mid 2000s through around 2013, a few choice pockets stand above all. With such brief but abundant azurite production, such stature is due mostly to either size or for reasons of color. Electric Blue Pocket azurites are now closely held, almost never for sale - and there were never many to begin with. The color is unreal, unlike azurite from anywhere else. It was determined that this is because the azurite on these crystals (which react 2.7 cm above the green malachite) is actually a very thin, almost microthin, coating upon malachite pseudomorphs after azurite; and so this is a multigenerational growth. Such a thin coating somehow lets light bounce in and refract out differently than in a thick solid azurite crystal, and the result is that these are the highest luster ever seen in azurite, as close to blue mirrors as one could imagine. In person, it is stunning and the color leaps out, differently than any other pocket from this or another locality. Collected around 2010, these are true treasures, and admittedly are priced accordingly. Here is a fine miniature with impeccable provenance, as it went to the miniatures collection of dealer/collector Marcus Budil, and then to his friend Gabriel Risse, where it remained for over a decade. For a miniature, this is simply shocking.