Description

This specimen features a beautiful water-clear 2.0 cm fluorite crystal perched on a composite parallel-growth crystal of cream-coloured calcite. The fluorite crystal has three combined forms – the octahedral faces are dominant, the cubic faces are relatively small and the dodecahedral faces are relatively smaller still. It’s a wonderful crystal, and that’s before you look inside it…

Inside this fluorite there is an inclusion, a perfect brilliant silver-coloured 4 mm aresenopyrite crystal, frozen inside, located under one of the two main octahedral faces on the display side, quite close to the surface, to it is easy to appreciate without any magnification. With magnification using a small hand lens, one can also see several tiny liquid inclusions with tinier bubbles inside – it is possible to see some bubbles move a little when you rotate the piece (still looking with the help of a loupe).  There are also microscopic flakes of clinochlore with this fluorite.

There are several smaller fluorite crystals on the piece and with magnification one can see that they too have tiny liquid inclusions inside. The calcite host is a complete floater – it formed free of any attachment to anything in the pocket.

The specimen is in excellent condition. Around the back of the main fluorite, there is an area where smaller crystals are missing and there is some damage at this spot. From either of two optimal display angles, there is no damage, to either the main crystal or to the smaller ones in other places on the calcite. This piece is brilliant displayed in either orientation of the first two photos – hard to choose! (It stands naturally as in the first photo.)

This is a remarkable fluorite specimen.