Bornite

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Bornite, aka peacock ore, is a relatively widespread copper iron sulphide, but remarkably it very rarely forms discrete well-formed crystals. Many of the best crystallized specimens of Bornite came from the Cornish copper mines spanning the 18th, 19th and the early part of the 20th century. The most productive mines were clustered along a broadly west-east line from Camborne, through Redruth to the small village of St. Day. The labeling of this very old specimen as Redruth indicates the uncertainty of which mine the specimen came from, and should be heralded - the previous owners not trying to ascribe an arbitrary provenance just for the sake of it. Two lovely 19th century German labels accompany the specimen, one a Krantz & Comp. label from Berlin, the other, a handwritten institution type label. Both simply record "Redruth in Cornwall". With research and comparison with well-provenanced historic collections there might be the possibility of fine-tuning this provenance, but it requires care and attention and time. Given the distinctive size and quality of the Bornite crystals present on this large miniature specimen, there is a distinct possibility that this could be done. The blocky aggregates of Bornite reach 1 cm across and under magnification are seen to have sparse minute dark grey elongated hexagonal prismatic Chalcocite crystals upon the surface. Quartz and massive Chalcopyrite form the matrix.