Cryolite

Unknown Owner

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Maybe some of you have seen this one at a show over the last 2 years? He didnt sell it and traded it at a liquidation price to me when the WL show closed up this year, but it needed lots of trimming and cleaning. I halved the size and made it a well-balanced killer, removing lots of excess mass. It consists of solid cryolite with many 1 cm crystals and one whopping large crystal which measures 2.5 cm, and has unusual corner modifications. This is very large in size for the species (except for a few pieces in museums in Europe, certainly the largest most of us will ever see), and is overall a very attractive piece for a "white mineral." Cryolite has an interesting history as it was the first industrial ore source for aluminum (see Peter Bancroft's book, Gem and Crystal Treasures), and this locality dates back to the 1800's. This specimen had an old museum number on the back of it, and though I do not know precisely where it came from, one would imagine it was from the Flink era and was exchanged out of a European museum at some point. Certainly, it is an old specimen by any standard. This is a significant and important historical specimen! 7.5 x 5 x 3 cm