Chondrodite (ex David Burgess Collection)

Item Description

Most often, Chondrodite will show an orange here, but about 10 years ago there was a discovery of some excellent quality and notably strong red colored crystals from this historic locality in Afghanistan. Mining has been taking place around Ladjuar Medam for at least 1,000 year, and some people believe it dates back to pre-biblical times. This piece features a good quality, sharp, lustrous, large (2.1 cm) well-formed, stout monoclinic crystal of Chondrodite sitting on matrix. You can see the rich red color when the crystal is backlit. The chondrodite on this piece is a superb quality, fairly sharp, well-formed, gemmy (when backlit), rich red monoclinic crystal on matrix. The termination on the piece was interrupted by the matrix, so it's not fully terminated, but it's still very good sized with excellent color. It should be noted that this piece came labeled as Clinohumite, which was common when they first hit the market, but there has yet to be a cofirmed specimed of Clinohumite from Ladjuar Medam. The piece comes from the worldwide collection of David Burgess (1951-2016). David was a prolific species collector from Newington, Connecticut, and the namesake for the extremely rare cobalt arsenate species Burgessite, which he discovered.