Amphibole (''Mountain Leather'') (rare locality specimen)

Item Description

A rarely seen specimen of "Mountain Leather" (a matted Amphibole species) from the famous Prospect Park Quarry in New Jersey. This locality is best known for its zeolites and associated minerals like Prehnite, but "Mountain Leather" is not commonly seen. This piece features a soft pinkish colored mass of compacted Amphibole on basalt matrix. The "Mountain Leather" has an almost "plastic" feel to it, I can't come up with a better term, but it almost doesn't feel like a mineral species, weird stuff to be sure, and made all the more intriguing by the rare trap rock locality in which is was found. From the collection of Chester ("Chet") S. Lemanski Jr. of Browns Mills, New Jersey (https://www.mindat.org/user-461.html). Collection #2098CL. Chet was born 1947 in started collecting minerals circa 1957. He worked briefly as a drill runner at the famous Sterling Mine, in Ogdensburg, New Jersey and from 1987 to 1990 he helped convert the mine into a public access mining museum. He has held the role of treasurer, vice president and president of the Franklin-Ogdensburg Mineralogical Society (FOMS), and has been a board member and vice president of the Franklin Mineral Museum. The rare copper arsenate, Lemanskiite was named in his honor in 1999.