Andradite Garnet

Unknown Owner

Help improve this recordNo 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.

Old California classic garnets! An impressive cabinet sized specimen featuring attractive, sharp, well-formed, lustrous crystals of dark reddish-brown andradite garnet measuring up to an amazing 4 cm across on a matrix of green epidote. The Garnet Hill Mine in Calaveras County, California is known for these spectacular andradites and this piece is a perfect example. These colorful garnets are zoned with the dodecahedral faces displaying a rich mahogany brown color and the beveled, trapezohedral faces that outline the crystals having a rich and distinctive red-brown hue for spectacular composition on these smooth, lustrous crystals. The big, glossy, glamorous garnets are stacked upon each other preeminently for maximum display affect. The back of the piece reveals that most of these garnets are grown on top of clusters of epidote crystals almost appearing zoned on top of them with epidote at the core and Andradite at the rim! This former W-Au-Cu-Mo skarn deposit was well-known for garnet and epidote crystals.