Azurite and Malachite ex Roebling & Jack Halpern

Item Description

WOW. This has long been one of the big "color impact" pieces in the front of one of the many showcases that ring the basement display area of Jack Halpern's surround-sound-in-minerals room. It has a gorgeous, rich, velvety blue color that is hard to describe. The contrast of textures and shape in the mix of roling blue azurite and roling patterned malachite here is complex, interesting, and really quite unique to Bisbee material. There are multiple intergrown generations here, showing the complexity of the deposit. This is an old specimen from the pre-WWI era of copper mining when Arizona was the rising copper king of America. This specimen was originally in the washington Roebling Collection which was purchased and trucked to the Smithsonian (Washington Roebling : the man who built the Brooklyn Bridge! see for more on minerals: https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/roeblingwashington-a/). It was later traded out and sold to collector Carl Stentz, whose label notes the provenance from his acquisition (many of the thousands of Roebling pieces were traded out in the time of curator Paul Desautels if they did not fit his taste and style at the museum). This then sold to San Francisco area collector Cliff Krueger, who had a fantastic collection specializing in cabinet specimens. After he passed away (nearly 20 years ago, see; https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/kruegerclifford-j/), Jack was allowed first choice from the estate and made a number of purchases that bulked up the Halpern collection with color and size, and this became #3144 in Jack's own collection. This is a large, significant, pristine, and colorful remnant of America's historic copper mining history, and it is such a unique and organic specimen that it stands out among other Bisbee pieces we have seen and sold. 1730 grams (3.8 pounds weight). Such large Bisbee specimens anyways are valued in the five figures, and this is a really unique style.