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Mineral Specimens with Spessartine
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1.8 x 1.4 x 1.4 cm. A fine thumbnail spessartine crystal from Tanzania. This crystal weighs 11 grams.
striking CABINET-SIZED plate of very gemmy, wine-red spessartine garnets to 8 mm and lustrous, transparent to translucent smokey quartz crystals on feldspar matrix from China. A bit of peripheral edge damage, but definitely not detracting on this excellent piece. All of the major crystals are damage-free. 15.0 x 10.2 x 6.7 cm
With a good supply of these coming out recently, I have been careful to pick the best I could find so all of my customers can get their hands on a really fine one before the supply dries up and they become expensive in the future. This is a superb, classic-looking specimen, with a gemmy 5-cm smoky growing out over a bed of spessartines. Spessartines are also growing up the sides of the smoky. MUCH better in person, a gorgeous display face from the front, and you can see right through the smoky to the spessartines on the back! 7.5 x 5.5 x 4.5 cm
Bright, isolated spessartines to 0.7 cm, in a fine balance with smoky points, on contrasting matrix. This is a big, fine specimen, a cut above the relatively common lot of mediocre Tongbei specimens on the market. 10.7 x 8.5 x 3.6 cm
Sharp, lustrous, gemmy crystals of a deep wine-red, to 0.8 cm, cover the face of this brilliant and sparklingm deep-red garnet specimen. 4 x 2.2 x 2 cm
10.1 x 6.9 x 4.0 cm. What you have is a bent black schorl tourmaline crystal, distorted from pressure during growth in the pocket. At one end of his a cluster of parallel quartz crystals have formed, wrapping themselves around the schorl - and there is a little red spessartine to cap it all off.
9.3 x 7.3 x 6.0 cm. A stunning specimen with an approximately 1-inch red-orange garnet perched atop a snowy-white mass of albite and schorl. Here we have a larger crystal that was gently etched in the pocket, but not so much as to lose its form or fall off matrix. Instead, the gentle etching effect has given it thousands of facets to reflect light from. Likely from mining in the 1960s and early 1970s. Ex. Pala International/William Larson Collection.
2.9 x 2.7 x 1.8 cm. This is a stunning, unusually large crystal of spessartine for the locality which is miraculously not badly etched like so many are. It sits on a pedestal of cleavelandite matrix, and is exceptional for its display quality. The crystal is complete all around, though shows a contact on the back where it grew in the pocket against a schorl that left an impression. The crystal is 1 inch. Bill Larson obtained it in the early 1980s from mine owner Louis Spalding Sr.'s collection. Ex. Pala International/William Larson Collection.
An unusually transparent smoky of 3.9 cm rises in the back of the matrix, with spessartines not only around it, but clearly visible inside it. They formed on the surface of a quartz crystal that is phantomed inside it, and then the growth of the quartz crystal continued, engulfing the earlier crystal with the spessartines on it. There are lustrous spessartines to 0.6 cm scattered across the contrasting white matrix as well. 8 x 7 x 5.5 cm
Super-bright, gemmy spessartines cover the face of this huge specimen, but with a bit of space in between them so they are attractively isolated and not "massed", and are nicely contrasted against the greenish matrix. The spessartines are not large - they measure to about 0.4 cm - but this specimen isn''t about big crystals - it''s about FLASH, and that it has in spades! Scattered amongst the spessartines are sharp, lustrous little smokies. There is also some arsenopyrite and fluorite to add interest. 25 x 14 x 6 cm
3.9 x 3.8 x 3.8 cm. Here is a real old-timer - a big, 2.5-cm burgundy spessartine garnet, embedded in a euhedral crystal of galena. Just about all of those anomalies you see on the spessartine crystal faces are natural "cut-glass" modifications, very pretty; there is only one small rough area where the crystal grew against something. The faces of the crystal are lustrous, and you can see into them - it is slightly transparent. Ex. Elling Collection.
5.6 x 4.8 x 4.3 cm. A large example of a spessartine garnet from a major find inTanzania. The full locality information for this deposit is near the town of Loliondo, close to Serengeti National Park and 7 km from the Kenyan border, W-NW of the north end of Lake Natron. Some of these are extremely large, and they typically get less transparent as the size gets larger. This is a very large one, and therefore accordingly less transparent, but there is one side that shows some good transparency and bright orange color. The other side is contacted. Weighs 250 grams.
This is a smoky/spessartine specimen of the variety that turned up recently on a greenish matrix of euhedral feldspar, making it extra attractive. The smokies here are to 1.5 cm in length, with little spessartines right on them. The spessartines are bright and gemmy. 4.8 x 4 x 2.5 cm
4.2 x 2.7 x 2.1 cm. This is a rare, superb spessartine on matrix from the finds at this site in Tanzania. The color is intense, the form perfect, and it has no damage at all. The crystal is almost 2 cm tall, and looks like a glowing orange carving on its perch of sparkling muscovite.
5.2 x 2.3 x 1.2 cm, 2.8 x 2.1 x 1.1 cm, 2.5 x 1.9 x 1.9 cm. From the personal garnet collection of Bill Larson, three superb specimens of spessartine garnet, one with smoky quartz, from this now-familiar locality in China.
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Rob Lavinsky, rob@irocks.com
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share specimen![Spessartine from Nani, Loliondo, Arusha Region, Tanzania [db_pics/mdpics/MD-187609a.jpg]](db_pics/mdpics/MD-187609a.jpg)
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![Spessartine from Nani, Loliondo, Arusha Region, Tanzania [db_pics/mdpics/MD-195255a.jpg]](db_pics/mdpics/MD-195255a.jpg)
![Spessartine from Wushan Spessartine Mine, Tongbei, Yunxiao Co., Zhangzhou Prefecture, Fujian Province, China [db_pics/mdpics/MD-19723a.jpg]](db_pics/mdpics/MD-19723a.jpg)
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