Amazonite & Smoky Quartz

Item Description

The Smoky Hawk claim has, since about 2006 or so, produced amazonite and smoky quartz combination pieces that rival the famous Tree Root Pocket material of the late 1990s. Some of them, such as this piece, are more aesthetic to my eye because they have not only the super colorful amazonite in fake-looking, intense blue color, combined with smoky quartz: also, the best quartzes are generally gemmier and more translucent than the older Tree Root Pocket pieces. Moreover, on this piece, the quartzes (to 3 inches!) shoot up so starkly and dramatically, that it "makes" the specimen. In many such combination pieces, the smokies are undersized compared to amazonite, or vice versa. Or, the two are often in a more jumbly aggregate that is pretty and of high quality, but not really the kind of stark geometry that I favor. I like specimens best when you have crystals on crystallized matrix, and the two geometries are as different in color and crystallography as you see here. This piece has it all! Like nearly all such larger amazonite combination pieces, old and new finds both, this has a few repairs that would be considered par for the course, so long as they are well done and clean (which they are). This specimen sits nicely in the palm of your hand, spraying three-dimensionally to fill space. I obtained this specimen from the William Ferris collection by exchange, before that collection was sold off in 2008. I owned the specimen for about 15 minutes before it was snapped up by the first person who saw it at the time...seen in person, it REALLY does leap out at you, compared to most others, for its dimensionality and the bonus of gemminess of the smoky quartz with good lighting. Mr. Ferris was the first owner, having acquired it directly from the company of Joe and Tim Dorris, the miners, several years previously. Since that time until now it has been in the Dallas collection of Rick Beard and then in Fran Allegra's collection (circa 2010 until now). I regard it, for the size, as one of my favorites of this classic combination in a price range that is admittedly affordable to many collectors without going for six-figure prices. 

NOTE CONTRIBUTED BY THE COLLECTORS, JOE & TIM DORRIS: Thanks for featuring the Night Hawk piece catalog. My son, Tim, who is an avid fan called my attention to the posting. A bit of information: I found it on 29 June 2006. Only a few other pieces came from the pocket, all smaller and relatively insignificant. All showed the nice translucency which this Night Hawk piece exhibits. You can see from the attached photo, the pocket was quite small, less than a foot across! So, this is a far more rare piece from a special pocket, still remembered years later by the folks who dug it...and that is worth saying! When this became available, Fran had to have it. He had been searching for a GREAT combo piece of this material since the 1990s and had never found "the one." At the time, in 2010, this was valued at $20,000 and was a lot of money for Fran, so there was a rare deaccession involved to acquire this (Fran loved his minerals and seldom bought more than one a year, so it was very rare that he would part with anything). But for this, he had to! It remains today, a special specimen with a special history direct to a uniquely styled pocket. It has a drama and a 3-dimensional look that make it stand out even among others mined before and since. We rank it highly today and value it in the $30,000 range.