V22-1438
Quartz (Gwindel)
Göscheneralp, Göschenen, Reuss Valley, Uri, Switzerland
Cabinet, 11.6 x 8.5 x 7.9 cm
Ex. Brent Lockhart
$24,500.00 Payment Plan Available
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A truly bizarre, wondrous quartz formation, this has subtle complexity everywhere you look! The transparency and sparkling windex-clean window look of the quartz is amazing and leaps out at the eye, when well lit. The next thing that you see is the dramatic twist, about the most "twist that you can have in a gwindel quartz specimen, as the major crystal curls about an imaginary core and literally changed its angle of growth as it formed (gwindels are amazing!). Generally gwindels are found as solo crystals and matrix pieces are unusual. Swiss gwindels tend to be smoky, and the colorless crystals, especially in transparency and with luster like this, are much more rare than smoky quartz gwindels (for reasons I never understood, this is simply the way the Alpine quartz were made). So, it's unusual to find a glassy gwindel like this on matrix; and as a bonus it is on a contrasting matrix of more "typical" quartz crystals. Another, shorter gwindel quartz lays flat on the matrix. The large dramatic "spire" gwindel shoots up and is freestanding, 9 cm tall. It is complete 360 degrees around and actually is undamaged, but has a clean lockfit repair at its base to the matrix. Matrix gwindels of this quality can easily be priced in the six figures, from certain famous collections we have seen sell in Europe. This came out of an American-based collection (Brent Lockhart), assembled discreetly and carefully over decades, and is priced much more fairly than comparable important pieces might usually command if you had to buy them from the modern community of collectors who, in all fairness, risk their lives to collect these things in the high Alps. It is a stunning piece in a showcase.