Smithsonite With Calcite (And Original Watercolor Painting By John Sinkankas) - image 1

Smithsonite With Calcite (And Original Watercolor Painting By John Sinkankas)

Unknown Owner

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Smithsonites from the old Kelly Mine are around'name a size and price range, and with a little patience any collector can get a beautiful specimen. However, most pieces are flat, and have no association. This is a gorgeous, 3-dimensional, mounded piece with intense color AND a really unusual association with flower-like rosettes of calcite crystals. It is complete all around and has no damage, just a superlative example. It was purchased shortly after mining by well known book author and collector, John Sinkankas of San Diego. He described it in 1966 as "a very fine specimen of shining botryoids, color rich blue-green," at a time when they were generally available and yet this was special even then. Note on his card, he valued it at triple what he paid, on the day he accessioned it to his card files! The piece stayed with John through the sale of the majority of his collection (possibly thousands of pieces) in the 1980s; and I last saw it in his home in the mid 1990s before he passed away. By then, he had picked up water color painting as a hobby and painted his favorites. I bought a number of remaining pieces from him in the late 1990s but did not have the funds at the time to purchase this piece. It was sold to another dealer, who sold it to Jack Halpern at the first showing of the piece. It remained in Jack's collection in San Francisco until exchanged to me (with some evident agonizing on both sides) in 2009. I have seen so much of this material over the years (25 years of dealing), and so few pieces ever struck me the way this one did both when I first saw it, and still today. It is a sentimental piece that has a lot of meaning to both myself and its previous owners, both gentlemen-collectors of the old style who truly are passionate for their pieces. I can admit I feel a little guilty trading it out of Jack, to tell the truth...but he wanted a REALLY nice rock from me in return, towards it all, and that's how it has to work. Joe Budd photos