Description

Detailed Description

Great specimen of star muscovite – good size for a display piece.  Nice glassy white translucent albites in association.  Not easy to measure the composite larger star at the back (too interconnected to figure out what to measure!) – for scale, the one on the right is 3.5 cm across.  There are minor rubs at the tips and peripheral damage down at the front, but this specimen is really striking on a cabinet shelf and viewing it that way, these are not what you notice most!  This is simply a super 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 under-appreciated. (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”!