Calcite on Siderite

Item Description

A beautiful old-time specimen from about 30-40 years ago (early 1980s-1990s ) from Dalnegorsk. This piece is unlike most I've seen from the area as it features attractive, gemmy, virtually colorless, modified trigonal crystals of Calcite measuring up to 2.6 cm, which are overgrowing almost "banded", multi-color rhombic crystals of Siderite featuring various golden, sandy and brown hues. You can see there is almost an epitaxial overgrowth taking place as the Calcite seems to be partially enveloping the Siderite rhombs on select faces. I love the glassy almost limpid quality of some of the faces on the Calcite crystals, and they are such a gorgeous contrast against what I would call an "earthy" quality of the Siderite. A really cool specimen from Dalnegorsk that would make a fine addition to any carbonate suite or a collection of Russian minerals. Don't miss out on this one, it's certainly not your run-of-the-mill example from this prolific locality. From the collection of Kurt Hefendehl (#41 R), a well-known German collector all over Europe with worldwide contacts to dealers and collectors. He started collecting seriously at the age of 14 and his great and varied worldwide collection reached over 6000 pieces. He was very active mineralogically until shortly before his passing in 2020 at the age of 82. Considering his collection had a large number of pieces, it still had an unusually high standard of quality from most worldwide localities. He particularly specialized in all classics as well as minerals of the Black Forest, where he spent much time collecting. His Black Forest and German subcollections went to his good friend Wolfgang Wendel. We at The Arkenstone have the privilege of offering the remainder of this great worldwide collection over the next two to three years through our various platforms.