Description
A 3.7 cm brazilianite crystal stands elegantly at the top of crystallized albite. The piece is a floater, and the albite has an appearance of having perhaps been etched and re-crystallized during late stage formation. The main brazilianite crystal is in superb condition – to the naked eye it’s pristine. The large brazilianite is sharp, glassy, lustrous and translucent with a little cloudiness down around the albite. The several smaller brazilianite crystals have these same attributes and additional transparency. This specimen has the highly-desired isolation of the brazilianite on the contrasting white feldspar – it is a beautiful matrix brazilianite!
Exceptional display specimens of brazilianite have been found only in Brazil, and most of those have been produced in from the pegmatites intruded into the mica schists in the region of the Lavra do Corrego Frio, the type locality for brazilianite. The Lavra do Telirio is one of these deposits. It has now been closed down, as environmental regulators deemed it too close to the river to be operated. It is expected that there will be no further mining at the Telirio.