Name: Quartz with Inclusions (Anhydrite casts)
Brand: The Arkenstone
Price: 7500 USD
Availability: InStock

Quartz with Inclusions (Anhydrite casts)

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This sparkling quartz specimen is from the well known quartz collection of Bill Larson, a suite of nearly 400 crystals that he started assembling by the mid 1970s with help from Peter Bancroft. The entire collection was long on display in his store, Pala International's The Collector, in Fallbrook, California, for many people (me, included) to see and be inspired by. It was intended to be both educational and beautiful, with huge variety. This is a particularly unusual piece from early finds in Pakistan, perhaps the 1990s. It is a glassy, alpine-quality water clear quartz cluster that is richly included by diagonal lines that shoot through it at specified angles and trajectories within. From comparison with Swiss examples and Brazilian examples of similar habit, though often in less showy quartz crystals, we believe that these "tubes" are hollow casts of quartz casting upon anhydrite, and then the anhydrite simultaneously dissolved out even as the crystal formed. This type of included Quartz is seldom seen from the Swiss Alps or anywhere for that matter, but is known in limited quantity and turns up occasionally (sometimes with remnant anhydrite within, in Brazil/Uruguay). What makes this so special is that it is completely limpid, transparent like glass - so the result is like a crystal ball, or similar to looking at a rutilated quartz sphere. It is hard to focus the eyes on this thing and actually focus on quartz faces, as the eye shoots off following the lines within. A significant and rare quartz of gorgeous quality, from the 50-year Quartz Collection of Bill Larson (although he is more widely known as the owner of the Himalaya Mine and discoverer of the Blue Cap Pocket nearby, he has/had various worldwide suites he built as well).