Fluorite with Quartz

Unknown Owner

Blackdene mine, by the village of Ireshopeburn in County Durham, is one of the classic Weardale Fluorite localities with specimens from here gracing museum and private collections the world over. This delightful miniature has six glassy lavender Fluorite crystals, which show delicate colour zoning, perched on an eye-catching druse of snow-white micro-Quartz crystals, which provide a perfect foil to the Fluorite. Such snow-white Quartz from Blackdene is quite unusual. Some of the Fluorites are interpenetrant twins and to one end, a tiny (< 2x2 mm) perfect interpenetrant Galena twin sits on the Quartz, with cubic crystals whose corners are modified to the octahedron.