Description

Detailed Description

A pair of gorgeous deep green elbaite tourmaline crystals on microcline with albite. The colour zoning ranges through greens and is capped with a very thin zone at the termination of each crystal, visible upon close inspection – in the shorter crystal it is colourless and in the taller crystal it is pink. The terminations of these singly-terminated crystals are frosted white. In excellent condition – there is no damage to these elbaites. For its size, this is a killer.

(Note: the colour on these is brought out best with either a strong light or a reflector behind or to one side, as in the first photograph.)

About These Stak Nala Tourmalines

Since the 1980s, elbaite toumaline crystals from the pegmatites at Stak Nala have been known worldwide. Particularly distinctive and prized when associated with albite crystals, these tourmalines are usually colour-zoned, with dark green to black-appearing centre sections, with zones of green, pink, blue or colourless zones  at the terminations – often, a closer inspection with strong light or a strong reflective background is needed to show these zones. The doubly-terminated crystals from Stak Nala are super examples of hemimorphism (the crystal forms present at one termination are different from those at the other termination). I was fortunate to acquire these from a member of the family that mines them.