Andradite Garnet (ex Dr. Stephen Smale Collection)

Item Description

Here we have a fine quality, very sharp, well-formed, euhedral, textbook dodecahedral crystal of dark reddish-brown Andradite Garnet with a few additional accenting Andradites, free of matrix from the famous Huanggang Mine in Inner Mongolia. The main Andradite crystal is complete on all sides, though there is a small amount of roughness in a few spots, so it's not completely pristine. You don't see many Garnet crystals that measure over 4 cm from most world localities, but the Huanggang pieces are special, and some of the finest example of skarn deposit Garnets I've seen. This piece dates back to 2010, and I haven't seen much of new material like this from Huanggang in a few years, so this particular part of the deposit might not be producing anything for the foreseeable future. Ex Dr. Stephen Smale Collection. Along with amassing one of the finest private mineral collections in the world, Steve is a renowned mathematician. His accomplishments include being awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 along with being the awarded the Wolf Prize in mathematics in 2007. You can read Steve's bio on the Mineralogical Record website ( https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/smalestephen/ ) or on Wikipedia.