Malachite on Calcite

The malachite spray is 35 mm long and 30 mm across at its widest point. The calcite crystals are rhombohedrons up to 11 mm across.

The specimen was sold to me as having come from Kasompi Mine in the DRC, but on 14 March 2020 I met Vitek Urbanski, the mining engineer at the Diana Maria and Rogerley Mines (and in 2001 the overseer of resumed mining at Tsumeb), and he assured me that he personally had found the piece, not in Kasompi but in Kombat.

The piece was published on p.86 of ‘Moderne Klassiker’ extraLapis 52 2017 (wrongly attributed to Kasompi).

Photo by László Kupi