Painite

Unknown Owner

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Absolutely superb! Here we have an exceptional, large, doubly terminated gem Ruby encrusted Painite crystal from the Wet-Loo mines in Myanmar (Burma). This specimen was part of the big, and never-repeated, discoveries in contact metamorphic dirty marbles in the region in 2005. It is a large, brown, prismatic crystal of this complex calcium zirconium aluminum borate-oxide beautifully adorned with red to red-pink Ruby crystals from 1 mm to 1.5 cm in size! Exposed prism faces of Painite in between the Rubies are a translucent, rich, chestnut brown and display very high luster. This is an attractive specimen with normal lighting and the Ruby crystals fluoresce red in both short and long wave UV. The crystals that originated from this pocket are the largest of their species and this piece could conceivably the best-of-species for its size range for its quality, size and association of exceptional and large Ruby crystals! Bill Larson brought nearly all out to the West, and kept back a few such as this with combination of color and shape, generally considered best of species and orders of magnitude better than previous material.