including 45 specimens WITH INDIVIDUAL NOTATIONS BY LAZARD CAHN (1865-1940)

(many presumed to be self-collected)
Lane & Sons Traprock quarrys, Westfield, Hampden Co., Massachusetts
ex. Lazard Cahn Collection
ex. George Feist Collection

Cahn's training before becoming one of the most well-known mineral dealers of the early 1900s was as a student studying crystallography under Victor Goldschmidt. Apparently, he was a brilliant crystallographer but only published one paper, despite a large number of private studies and letters (see the Mineralogical Record's biographical archive for more detail). This unique collection was one which Lazard Cahn obviously assembled over a long period of time, to study the crystallography of datolite. As far as we can determine, it remains unpublished. The collection includes 45 specimens, about half thumbnails and half miniatures, of pale-blue datolite crystals from this old quarry. They are fine crystals in and of themselves, worth $50-500 apiece simply as specimens. But, the highlight of the collection are the historical crystallography sketches and notes in Cahn's own hand for all of them, as shown in the scans below.

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CLICK HERE FOR LARGER IMAGE Box 6:

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