Description

Detailed Description

Light golden muscovite stars clustered on a feldspar matrix.  The muscovites on this piece are very sharp.  A few light rubs to tips, but they are small and not distracting.  Beautiful small cabinet star muscovite.

About these Muscovites

Like most good mineral collectors, I have – once in a while – cursed micas. But in fact I feel that the mica group minerals are underappreciated. (This seems like a good blog post topic so I’ll come back to it then… ). The famous “star micas” from the Jenipapo Mine are an excellent reason to look more closely – that is just awesome crystal morphology, period.

Although the specimens from this mine are well known and have at times been produced in significant numbers I have looked at hundreds), there are usually two major issues with the star micas: (1) usually they are damaged beyond any point of acceptability and (2) many have been soaked in oil to deepen the yellow colour, leaving them pretty sad looking.  There’s little worse in Mineral World than a damaged, oiled mica.

Anyway. I went through a large excellent lot and picked the very best – these are rare quality “star muscovites”!