Aragonite with Sulfur (classic material)

Item Description

A good sized and showy display specimen of the famous old Aragonites from the Giumentaro Mine in Sicily. These classic specimens are regarded among the finest examples of the species in the world for their impressive quality, size, crystallization and color. This piece is filled with many excellent, sharp, well-formed, lustrous, elongated, pseudo-hexagonal crystals (they're actually cyclic twins) of pale greenish-grey colored Aragonite measuring up to 2.0 cm sitting atop a layer of drusy grey Calcite on matrix. Minor bright yellow Sulfur can be seen on the lower edge. BOTH sides of the specimen feature wonderful Aragonite crystals. Very little damage, which is impressive for the size of the piece. These old Italian classics are hard to come by now in good size and this is a very aesthetic piece that would look great in a mineral case. Historically, I have seen older examples from the 1800s but the mine was still open into the early 1980s, and I feel like this one was probably mined late in the lifetime of the mine.
From the worldwide mineral collection of Albert Lewis Kidwell (January 1, 1919 - August 16, 2008). Al was a well-known mineral collector and research geologist with Carter Oil Company and later Exxon Oil Company in Houston, Texas. The phosphate species Kidwellite was named in his honor in 1974.