Torbernite, Limonite

Unknown Owner

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A rare English torbernite, and actually quite pretty, in that the lustrous, grass-green, platy crystals are isolated on a contrasting limonite matrix This is accompanied by an old, 1950s-era Schortmann's label and was then in the Phil Scalisi Collection. Crystals measure to about 4 mm and there must be dozens of them. This is not from the usual Gunnislake Mine in Cornwall, and so is a bit of an oddity. The Scalisi label indicates, that this piece was also in the Lechner Collection. Viennese mineral collector Moritz Lechner built a high-quality collection of over 8, 000 specimens in the latter half of the 1800s. One of his son's, Adolf, inherited the collection in 1904. The collection was finally sold in the early 1950s, just before Adolf's death. This piece is easily over 100 years old.