Aquamarine on Muscovite

Item Description

This is seemingly your classic Ping Wu aquamarine assemblage, with sharp, tabular, hexagonal aqua crystals perched in golden muscovite. However, in person the aqua here is significantly more lustrous than usual, more shiny and glassy. The muscovite is more golden than the usual gray-hued colors you see from here. The major aqua crystal is 5 cm across. Totally complete on front and sides, and pristine, this is contacted only on the back where removed from the pocket wall. Ping Wu is within the national Panda refuge boundary and mining here has become increasingly restricted. Then, to make it worse for mineral extraction, this was the epicentre of the 2008 earthquake which destroyed so much infrastructure, and so many people's lives and livelihoods in this region. The road to this mine was even shut down for a brief time.