The piece was acquired by the Humboldt Museum in Berlin on an unknown date. It seems that some time between 1966 and 1970 it went to the renowned dealer Martin Ehrmann. See The Mineralogical Record article on him on pp.347-370 on Volume 25, and in particular the right hand column on p.369, which mentions his visit to Humboldt University in Berlin in 1966; see also https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/ehrmannmartin/. Ehrmann traded it to the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle of Luxembourg. It appears from one of the old labels supplied with the piece that this occurred in 1970. It apparently stayed in the Luxembourg Museum until 2019, when it went to a private Tsumeb collector in Germany.

The two robust interlocking azurite crystals (one 60x30x13 mm and the other 55x30x13 mm) are partially altered to malachite pseudomorphs – a classic Tsumeb phenomenon. A smaller (33x8x5 mm) pure azurite crystal straddles the foot of the longer crystal. The azurites are a lustrous and intense deep royal blue, with strong vertical striations, well and sharply terminated. The fibrous surfaces of the irregular malachite patches are in various shades of green.

Intriguingly, this Blue Cap Productions short video presented by John A Jasczak and posted 5 December 2024 shows a similar piece donated to the A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum in the early 1990s by Don Gabriel who, in turn, had acquired the piece from Martin Ehrmann in June 1938, as shown in the collection’s index card near the end of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVjCgasJ2XY. Given the similarity of that piece, I speculate that it’s not inconceivable that this piece came out before 1938.

Photo by László Kupi