Fluorite

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A very sculptural and geometric Fluorite "corner" from Elmwood that is quite unique for the location and rarely seen on market today! The piece is dominated by the three, super lustrous corner faces of a water-clear Fluorite cube that have an etched and tapered extension. It resembles a double triangular pyramid with shallow angled faces at the top and then an attenuated pyramid for the remainder that scintillates due to the multitude of tiny cube faces produced as a result of the etching on this part of the specimen. There is a faint purple cast to the upper portion of the piece and less so for the remainder which is essentially colorless. A stunning and artistic Fluorite from the Elmwood Mine in Tennessee. These actually form by a complicated process where the cubic original crystal goes through a dissolution process in hot fluids in the pocket (not an etching process!), where fluorite molecules are preferentially removed from edge faces over the corners which seem to offer some kind of molecular attachment and stability. The result is that you have a cube eaten away from the center-faces of the cube, leaving the corners to look like this, gem corners floating on elongated stalks, and they gently fall to the bottom of the pocket where they wait millions (tens of millions?) of years to be found by us. This phenomenon is unique to Elmwood!