ERONGO09-12
Aquamarine With Schorl
Erongo Mountain, Usakos District, Erongo Region, Namibia
Cabinet, 13.1 x 11.1 x 9.8 cm
SOLD
This piece screams with color and has amazing 3-dimensional arrangement of the aquamarines upon the contrasting schorls. The large aqua is DOUBLY-terminated and 9.5 x 2.9 x 2.7 cm in size. It graces the back or the front of this specimen depending on how you want to show it. From one side, you have a shocking cluster of fat, very gemmy, aquas hanging off the schorl backdrop, featuring this largest doubly-terminated crystal in the middle. A few small aquas are broken off to the periphery, but none of the majors and it is inconsequential in context. A very minor bit of edge wear, a few dings that are trivial in context, are present on the big aqua terminations, but this does not detract visually as they are shallow; and I only mention it for accuracy here. From the other display angle of view, you have what looks like a totally different, more elegant specimen, featuring several fat aquamarine tips poking up over hills of schorl (and with the forest of accenting aquas below, like trees on a slope). The piece looks incredible from either angle of display - and as I said, it looks really like two entirely different pieces depending on your choice of angle. Overall, this has some of the most robust, deep blue color I have seen before in an Erongo specimen, with a translucent and deeply colored body and a gemmy termination atop. The intense color, and large size, combined with luster and a contrasting schorl association, all conspire to make this a special pocket considered by those who saw them recently at the Denver show to be among the best aqua finds here in about a decade of quite sporadic aquamarine mining. With its unique aesthetics and schorl contrast, this is a major display quality, cabinet aquamarine that is DIFFERENT then anything that ever came out of Brazil or Pakistan.