Cyanotrichite and Brochantite

Help improve this record

No owner is registered for this specimen yet. If it's yours or you know more about it, you can add the owner, provenance, publications and other details.

Cyanotrichite is a Copper Aluminum sulfate and well-crystallized specimens like this one are rare from anywhere, particularly this classic and now inaccessible USA locality. This was found in the mid 1960's in the Grandview Mine, which was originally developed in the Grand Canyon in 1893 and is now (later) part of Grand Canyon National Park. The mine is long defunct, but when specimens were being recovered, they were some of the most incredible, and brightly colored specimens from Arizona, or anywhere else for that matter. This specimen has numerous tufts of hair-like, radiating, acicular (needle-like) aggregates or "sprays" of Cyanotrichite with excellent, electric blue color. It's associated with numerous, bright green sprays of Brochantite to provide a wonderful color pallette. This is a stunning small cabinet specimen! No specimens have been recovered from here in decades and are rarely available on the market. It should be noted that Moore's Compendium of Mineral Discoveries lists the Grandview Mine as the Type Locality and in contrast, MINDAT lists a mine in Romania as the Type Locality?! "A specimen with vugs of incredibly powder cyanotrichite crystals with some minor dark green brochantite. The specimen was collected by Bob Bartsch on September 3, 1966. I got the specimen when I was willed his mineral collection after his death. The suite of specimens that he collected at that time is I am sure the finest group of specimens remaining from the mine, and possibly the finest ever from this small mine." Rock Currier noted in his catalog in March of 2015. http://www.mindat.org/article.php/2158/Robert+Bartsch+++RIP++1939+to+2014